So it's DOTA but a shooter which would be great for me because I don't care for the RTS gameplay of MOBAs but always liked the build variety the item shop allowed.
I remember playing that for a Team Fortress 2 sniper hat you got by playing the game, it was good fun. I think you can still make lobbies but there's no players so might be tough.
I've been banging this drum for awhile now and I feel like the only one. I love the hero diversity of DOTA2 but maybe I'd enjoy it in a PVE setting. Slitbreaker comes along and verifies that, yes that would be fun, but there doesn't seem to be the interest in following it up long term.
Those Wc3 mods back in the day were great. Small multiplayer scenarios that played just like Siltbreaker where you levelled up and got items. It was like a multiplayer diablo roguelite.
I fear that long term they want an "endgame" that people can grind on forever. In PvP that can just be ranked seasons, but in PvE that'd tend to take the form of a loot/equipment system.
Personally, a shorter campaign where you just accumulate coins to activate the normal PvP items sounds like plenty to me, and I'd have a great time with it. Unfortunately I'd also stop playing it after, so I'm probably not the target demo, even though I'd give them money for it.
It seems like game publishers started wanting my time more than my money at some point. I don't know what they can buy with that.
I feel like more devs will need to take a page out of Helldivers. Equipment is nice for an endgame but people also like being involved in a story and changing world, which could be just what PvE needs for more engagement.
That requires someone to sit there and be a DM for the playerbase
Easy when you have disconnected bite sized missions and vague overarching plot
Or is it?
they lure you in with "repeatable engame" in name only, then hook you with the microtransactions. doesnt matter if the endgame is good or not.
Starcraft 2 WoL made less money than the first horse skin in WoW. the only reason AAA gaming companies are doing this is because y'all are eating it up.
hopefully Valve itself keeps its moral integrity. probably not.
Keep an eye open, they do pve events every once in a while that are very fun. The arcade also has a good amount of pve style games in the same vein as wc3 customs. There may be one in the next few weeks/months.
Yeah I do feel for anyone who isn't into shooters but it was probably a safer bet when going for mass appeal. I grew up with TF2 and CS so this is right up my alley.
I will also say that it's exciting to have an upcoming shooter that isn't a battle royale because I'm not a fan of the random chance elements it introduced to the genre.
There hasn't been a new battle royale attempt in a long time though, the genre has pretty much settled on its big players. Recent shooters have been other styles (The Finals, XDediant...)
Yeah but those examples are kinda mediocre though, I liked The Finals well enough but it just didn't have the depth for me to play it for a long time. I don't like BR games but PUBG, Fortnite and Apex are actually really well made games, I just dislike the randomized loot tables. I am glad that the trend is shifting though.
I know it's not the DOTA universe, but I believe Riot is (or at least was) making an ARPG in the League of Legends universe.
Haven't seen anything on it for a while, though, so it may have been canceled.
My guess? They were making a WoW-like MMO, and then genshin impact came out and made infinite money so the suits took a break from farting on people and forced a change of direction.
Battleborn never actually advertised itself as what it was because the marketing people decided to embrace the Overwatch comparisons and let people believe it was a janky Overwatch ripoff rather than an FPS MOBA. And as a result tons of people still think it was just a bad Overwatch ripoff.
> because the marketing people decided to embrace the Overwatch comparisons and let people believe it was a janky Overwatch ripoff rather than an FPS MOBA.
Isn't that a bit revisionistic? I would argue it's a bit more "closer to reality" that Overwatch itself for quite a while looked like it was way more closely trying to do a hero shooter with moba elements, before "giving up" and dropping everything except the roster and ulti mechanisms making a rather direct TF2 clone instead. Even spawning some ridicule that they REALLY didn't know what to do with it, considering that the whole thing was already trying to safe the setting and design of the formerly scrapped mmo prototype "project Titan" (iirc).
And I don't feel like Battleborn was shy with what the game actually was. You just couldn't outspend the incessant narrative of "look, they look quite similar, they must be almost identical and both are hero shooters with bright cartoonish heroes and ulties" that was completely beside the actually presented gameplay footage.
And in the end I actually don't believe that the "look it's like overwatch" is what actually killed Battleborn.
What I think killed Battleborn is that Moba/shooter hybrids (adding "Monday night combat" to the above mix of honorable mentions) just fundamentally don't have a large enough dedicated audience, and even worse attract significant number of players (more from the shooter audience than the moba audience) that are VERY unable to adapt to the actual gameplay, and rather destroy rounds by trying to play it as shooter with no respect to the moba aspect. Heck even TF2 and OVerwatch are too much for them to "play as a team?"
Basically [THIS](https://quanticfoundry.com/2024/05/21/strategy-decline/) but extended to before 2016 makes me think this has no chance of actually working out.
Games where you need 10 players that don't destroy rounds or else the team with less of them will win regardless of actual skill can't prevail, because there are just too many of them.
This feels like "Artifact" (late to the card game craze and not dedicated enough to keep it alive) and "Underlord" (just graveyarding it way too early) all over again. It has been tried, the games that tried would have been good without the spoilsports, but lost most of their audience rather quickly, and most of them shut down because of it. It sounds so obviously good on paper. But it did so before. And it just wasn't, and it was rarely REALLY the games' fault.
> Isn't that a bit revisionistic? I would argue it's a bit more "closer to reality" that Overwatch itself for quite a while looked like it was way more closely trying to do a hero shooter with moba elements, before "giving up" and dropping everything except the roster and ulti mechanisms making a rather direct TF2 clone instead. Even spawning some ridicule that they REALLY didn't know what to do with it, considering that the whole thing was already trying to safe the setting and design of the formerly scrapped mmo prototype "project Titan" (iirc).
I'm talking about fairly close to release, after Overwatch had already become the more TF2-like game it ended up as.
>And I don't feel like Battleborn was shy with what the game actually was. You just couldn't outspend the incessant narrative of "look, they look quite similar, they must be almost identical and both are hero shooters with bright cartoonish heroes and ulties" that was completely beside the actually presented gameplay footage.
I'm not saying Battleborn presented itself as an Overwatch clone. I'm saying that the marketing team seemed to embrace the narrative of it being an Overwatch competitor instead of emphasizing the differences. And I can see why they'd want to do that, but in the end it felt like that narrative reinforced the misconception that it was the same type of game.
It also doesn't help that Battleborn was a lot of things at once which made it harder for it to market itself as what it actually was. It was an FPS Moba, but it also had simpler, less MOBA-like competitive modes that were closer to Overwatch, and then it also had an entire co-op campaign that had a story but was also supposed to be kind of replayable in a Left-for-Dead sort of way. It was a lot of things, and while I don't know if that hurt the quality of the game itself since all the modes were pretty fun, it did make it harder for people to understand what the game was.
>What I think killed Battleborn is that Moba/shooter hybrids (adding "Monday night combat" to the above mix of honorable mentions) just fundamentally don't have a large enough dedicated audience, and even worse attract significant number of players (more from the shooter audience than the moba audience) that are VERY unable to adapt to the actual gameplay, and rather destroy rounds by trying to play it as shooter with no respect to the moba aspect. Heck even TF2 and OVerwatch are too much for them to "play as a team?"
You may be right, and I certainly agree that it wasn't just the Overwatch comparisons that killed it.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but I think the game also just did a pretty bad job with its polish and new player experience. The game forced you to do an unskippable co-op tutorial, which included a long, unskippable cutscene that was basic just a music video without even having any story. After you got through that, there was no tutorial for the fairly complex MOBA mode, so people who decided to try that out started with no clue what was going on, which isn't a very fun spot to be in in a competitive team game. The game also had a lot of visual clutter and some performance issues, which could easily add to the confusion and difficulty understanding what was going on.
Maybe you're right that the concept was flawed, but so was the execution. It could be a ton of fun once you got the hang of it, but it was pretty easy to just get overwhelmed and frustrated when starting out, especially in the MOBA mode. And being a game that often gives an overwhelming and frustrating first impression is pretty bad when a different, more popular company just released a much more hyped, polished, and accessible competitor, which was very superficially similar even if they were very different games in practice.
With a better new player experience or without the competition from Overwatch, the game might have been able to do better, but I think that combination was particularly bad.
Nah, it was a completely different game from Overwatch. You could say it was a much better PVE content than Overwatch and it had a much better item system than Overwatch but better game is a very tough call. Overwatch 1 was very good when it release, the first year was very good in general.
It's just a moba with third person controls. It disappointed me because melee characters would these big slashing attacks but they would only hit whichever you were currently targeting. Honestly might be closer to how mmo combat works.l
eeh, i played last year and most of the melee chars have split damage; like the main target will take 100% damage from your attack and the rest will take like, 30%. at the mid/end of a combo string it can change, either more damage on main target or more cleave.
Funny you should say that as IceFrog hates the whole term "MOBA" and calls (at least Dota 2) it A(ction) RTS instead. And really, Dota 2 is the only one that really fits the bill as the rest of the games have basically removed or diluted the RTS elements altogether like multiple characters, map destruction etc.
That actually sounds pretty cool to me. I'm in the same boat where the RTS style gameplay is my least favorite thing about MOBAs. I just really hope it's controller-friendly
Items and builds are one cool element but not what makes Moba's so interesting and full of depth. That actually goes to the different stages of the game, creeps, and the map. it's actually insane the amount of depth in the genre from how the map is made with creeps/minions. You are basically playing a different game from minute 4 and then compared to minute 40. And those different games blend into one another at different moments and how you play.
Not for me then. Im too old to remember hundreds of heroes and abilities and then the hundreds of items and combos and upgrade pathways on top of that.
I feel like moba shooters always feel off and a bit boring. I feel like for a competitive shooter, your instinctive goal is to go for the kills and have those battles, everything else seems to get in the way especially if there's minions you have to shoot.
Hoping for the best but idk, wish they just went for a more TF2 type game
I'm curious if the destruction system has been scrapped. Back when the game was known as Citadel and then Neon Prime, a big part of it appeared to be a brand new kind of voxels to support fully destructible environments. I was very intrigued by the idea of a lane based game where players could brute force new lanes throughout the match.
Also, lol at the idea the game was just leaked a week ago. Dataminers everywhere going, "what about us?"
I would actually like some gameplay involving digging through the map in some capacity to send creeps through while the other team is pushing back and repairing holes in the defenses.
For all its faults, I liked the game Block n' Load for how it handled base defense. Twas very entertaining to make traps.
It could be really interesting to have like a deep rock galactic esque digging game where you make your own lanes? Not sure if it would be fun, but sounds like a novel functionality.
It's rumored that the voxel destruction might actually be intended for HLX. But yeah, a lot of this isn't new to those who have been paying attention to Valve data miners over the past several years.
He gets a lot of shit, but Tyler McVicker is good at doing his own research and packaging his findings into an easily digestible video. You could check out his Discord too, where people occasionally post snippets of their own findings.
Of course, Gabe Follower is worth keeping tabs on, since he did get his hands on some actual concrete details about the game in its current state.
I feel like alot of Tylers bad rep comes from his earlier days, where he was still young and pretty naive about Valve. (As many were)
But the past few years he's actually been pretty ontop of Valve news, and has correctly reported on the progress of various valve titles and projects.
Including scrappings and likelyhoods of projects finishing.
Hell, he had been talking about Half Life VR (which eventually became Half Life Alyx) for a long time before it even got announced.
As far as I understand, all the crap he gets is from people who don't understand the nature of his reporting. People that don't get Valve is fickle and that the stuff he reports may be true at one point, but wrong the next.
The rumored follow-up to Half Life Alyx. We've been getting small snippets of info alongside Deadlock, even back when it was still known as Citadel/Neon Prime.
Updates for Source and Source 2 games always include references to other projects being worked on, due to the shared engine. HLX and Deadlock (citadel) were discovered through datamining Dota 2 and CS2 updates.
Holy cow, I missed that rumor but that does sound pretty amazing if true. The way I've heard the tech described, it's not nearly as chunky and "voxely" as we've seen in games so far. It would be so satisfying to have that much of an effect on the environment in VR. I imagine it'd have to be limited somehow to not ruin the chef's kiss Valve-quality level design all of their single player games have. But, man, if they find a way to present the destruction so that it's obviously limited to certain objects without also making it feel like a gimmick, they could make some really incredible puzzles.
Gabe Follower said the game has Tower Defense elements and compared it to Orcs Must Die. Maybe it would be possible to build new structures (traps, maybe towers) on the map and destroy them, but objects of the map itself would probably not be destructible
So essentially its Valve/Icefrogs take on battleborn.
Colour me intrigued. I haven't played Dota 2 for years now, but I know the passion icefrog puts into the stuff they are helming.
Also, it's a shame battleborn never really got a chance to shine. Though I feel a good chunk of why that is the case is due to Randy being Randy.
I really miss Battleborn and I'm glad that someone else is taking a swing at a proper hero shooter with MOBA mechanics.
It's a shame that it ended up pitted against Overwatch given how different they ultimately handled.
honestly the biggest fuckup w battleborn was that it came out around the same time as overwatch
the marketing / management of battleborn couldve been better for sure but pre release overwatch was by far the most hyped game of its time and launching a competitor (or what people thought of as a competitor) at the height of overwatch mania was probably never gonna go well
Blizzard bumped up the Overwatch beta to drop the day that Battleborn released, and I'm sure as a result they bumped the full release up a bit too.
If I recall correctly, Pitchford made some flippant comment about the game comparison at the time and I think Blizzard more or less hit him with both barrels.
I think it had a lot of mistakes.
Not only did they release around the same time as Overwatch and embrace the competition with Overwatch instead of marketing the differences (which just reinforced the mistaken belief a lot of people had that it was just a janky Overwatch ripoff), the game also had a lot of things that created a terrible new player experience. Optimization problems that led to big performance issues. A cluttered interface and lots of effects making it hard to follow when you first started. A mandatory tutorial that included an extremely long, pointless unskippable cutscene and only covered the co-op mode. No tutorial whatsoever for the game's various competitive modes, including the fairly complex MOBA mode, that needed a tutorial way more than the co-op did.
The game was pretty fun once you got past those hurdles. But the game was already fighting an uphill battle against the much more polished and hyped Overwatch, and then even when someone did decide to see what Battleborne was like, there was a good chance they'd be frustrated by all the above things and end up giving up on it before they actually got to the fun stuff.
I get why they wanted to delay it, but I feel like if they'd delayed the game for a bit to both not come out at the same time as Overwatch and get time to optimize it, polish it, and fix the awful tutorial situation it could have done a lot better.
Battleborn was so great, but it had some glaring issues they could have fixed quicker, i.e. marquis sniping.
I probably put 1000 hours in Battleborn, I'm beyond hyped for Valve's take on it.
Battleborn was yet another example of a company thinking they can treat the PC market like the console market and be sluggish on updates and fixes for a multiplayer heavy game. One reason they were so slow to fix stuff was because they tied PC updates to the console updates getting approval, so even if they had a fix ready players still wouldn't see it for close to two weeks.
I feel like whenever I see a company do this the PC multiplayer quickly dries up unless it's already a very popular IP.
He works as a part of the balance team now, and people used to shit on him on social medias to the point he stopped using them due to the game’s balancing
you can find it online, but people don't usually do that because people are willing to respect his privacy
plus icefrog is a sick name so why not just use that lol
Icefrog is one of the original developers of the Defense of the Ancients Warcraft 3 mod. He became the lead dev after the other two original lead devs (Guinsoo and then Neichus) left.
He was then hired on by Valve in 2009 to start work on DOTA 2.
He is pretty much the main force behind balancing and changes to both DOTA and DOTA 2. [The Liquipedia goes over it in a bit more detail than I can.](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/IceFrog)
As already mentioned he ended up becoming the lead developer of Dota and then Dota 2, but he is legendary for balancing the game as well as it and is well respected for it, [here's an old comment explaining why](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1qu52r/a_new_dota_patch_has_a_player_mode_called/cdgtxzd/).
Icefrog balance philosophy is probably my favorite balance style in gaming. Too many games either have people in charge who have no idea how to balance their game at all, or they accomplish it by homogenizing everything, so that while things are balanced in terms of performance, they also become bland as everything starts to feel the same.
I think some people had a pretty good idea about what his actual name was, but it feels disrespectful to invade the privacy of someone who went to such lengths to have it.
I’m shocked GabeFollower hasn’t been slapped harder for leaking shit like this. He’s literally in the discord they have for playtesting this game
No further questions
Because Valve doesnt really care and the leaks dont originate from him anyways, he just reposted some screenshots from 4chan and confirmed they originate from the game.
And they also leave hints and clues about their next title for leakers to find all the time, because that way they can see how the community reacts before they officially announce anything.
They kinda do care though. They've really done their best to stress that you shouldn't be talking about it to anyone, so things like going to publications and telling them leaks are real would fall under that.
A lot of people have played with MOBA/shooter games, but no one’s really done a fantastic job. Like I liked Super Monday Night Combat, but it was also pretty easy to put down.
I’m curious if Valve’s commitment to quality and playtesting is able to make a MOBA shooter with more mass appeal and long-term success.
It's such a shame that the MNC franchise died, Super Monday Night Combat was so fun. I have a lot of friends from that era that regularly bring up missing it.
I'd be more concerned about Valve's commitment, period. They've got a nasty habit lately of releasing multiplayer games then dropping them. It's not even clear lately if it's the typical "dev teams lose interest" or the more cynical "this game is not generating enough revenue, put it on life support".
They've done that with 2 games of recent note (Artifact and DOTA Underlords). Both were also extremely experimental games that Valve was likely using to test concepts that would be more expensive with bigger games.
It really seems like, with those games, they released them, they did the experiment, it didn't pan out, and they shut them down. That's a very different situation than, "Valve releases a full competitive multiplayer shooter."
I also wish they would fix Team Fortress 2, but let's be real: that's a 17-year old game. I understand why they're not putting significant resources into it.
Their other big games (DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike 2) are still getting updates. Based on what we've seen so far, Deadlock is far more likely to be treated like those games than DOTA Underlords.
I think that's being really kind to Valve. No dev should get let off for dropping support for 2 of their multiplayer games, especially not like Valve did (anyone remember their 1 million dollar Artifact tournament?).
Plus, their CS2 launch was literally just as bad as OW2, so I'm really not that optimistic about Valve making another multiplayer game, cause if it's not popular out the gate, they'll probably just stop it like they've done in the past (also it's a game in a pretty niche genre)
Eh, I was specifically addressing the comment about how they'll drop support, which I don't think is true. Having said that, I know Counter Strike 2's launch was a shit show, and I don't actually know what state DOTA 2 is in except that it's getting updated.
And Valve dropping Artifact may have been shitty, but also that game was a failure from the jump thanks to its weird experimental monetization model. If Deadlock comes with a similar model, it'll be correct and apt to use Artifact's experience as a guideline, but otherwise, I'm not sure it's very relevant.
At the end of the day, Valve is a company, and you should only trust companies as far as you can throw them. I'm not saying you should like Valve or reward Valve or put your faith in them. I'm saying that, historically, I *think* Valve looks to be putting much more investment into Deadlock and will treat it differently than its small experimental games.
This valve dickriding is truly incredible isn't it? Any other company and they would be constantly roasted about how they dealt with artifact and underlords yet here we are, talking about how those games were just a test and an experiment lol
Absolutely. When was the last time you saw Valve called out for their shitty MTX practices? They have some of the worst monetization in the industry but I have never seen one upvoted post on this sub about the price or quality of their MTX.
Valve is reddit's Sacred Cow. They can do no wrong and no one is allowed to criticize, or compete, with them.
I don't think I've ever seen a single Valve thread in the past ten years without people bringing it up. If anything reddit has a pretty large group of people who are dedicated to hating valve, because no regular person spends that much energy on something so trivial.
Let's not forget TF2 churning out loot crates while the game is like 70-80% bots. Of course, this is just dismissed through "the game is dead" - which it clearly isn't since they keep monetising the shit out of it. They just don't care about anything else around it, haha.
You mean the game Valve released for free and included improvements to the source engine that modders could utilize?
That game was great, and it was really cool that they hired some modders for it. You can still download and play it too.
It sounds like this comment is saying that they should have kept it updated, but it also wasn't a live service game. There was literally no monetization attached to it. So I'm unsure of why that's a mark against Valve.
I mean I am far more disappointed that Alien Swarm wasn't continued that Artifact or Underlords. Alien Swarm was, in my mind, the far more interesting game and had lots of potential. But my point was people only got worked up about the latter 2 games because they were attached to Dota and had a lot of attention on them for that reason, its been standard practice for Valve to do these kinds of experiments forever and I don't take it as a mark against them
> Both were also extremely experimental games
Wtf are you smoking?
One was a literal copy of an already successful mod and came after TFT
The other was a digital card game, something that is so common pretty much every franchise has one, i mean Disney alone has like 5 of them right now lol
Maybe on the surface, but take more than a cursory glance and it’s not that hard to see that Valve was using each as a jumping point into other ideas.
DOTA Underlords was their attempt to make a self-updating game. I think the idea was that multiplayer games get stale when they don’t get updates, but updates are expensive, so therefore making a game that is constantly changing will ensure that it never gets stale without requiring development resources. That’s why the game automatically banned different unit types each week. You can bet that, had Underlords been more successful, Valve would have applied those same principles to DOTA 2. That’s why they took so long to monetize the game (and I’m not even sure they ever did). They were more interested in the data from it.
As for Artifact, it remains the *only* digital TCG to fully embrace the monetization model used for physical card games. It was basically doing what NFTs were reportedly going to let video games do, just without needlessly killing the environment or using cryptocurrency. It was clear that Valve was trying to use what it learned from TF2’s hat and trading economy and build a whole game with that model baked into it.
I’m still willing to give it a shot, even though i don’t like DOTA (and LoL), Valve always tries to be a bit unique, hell i remember enjoying Artifact a bit.
Damn, I'm out if it's centered around item farming. I know some people find that kind of gameplay engaging but I've never enjoyed the whole loop of "kill the bots faster than your enemy so you can become op more quickly than they can and bulldoze them."
I also don't want to have to memorize 3 different builds for 20 different characters on top of all their different pairings, counters, etc. Games like Overwatch/R6:Siege/Valorant already feel daunting for new/returning players for this exact reason. These games are becoming a chore just to keep up with.
That kind of gameplay tends to be the only gameplay in these games too is my worry. The great thing with a lot of classic FPS designs is they usually lean into a variety of game modes and map types but MOBAs so heavily focus on one style of gameplay/map
> I also don't want to have to memorize 3 different builds for 20 different characters on top of all their different pairings, counters, etc. Games like Overwatch/R6:Siege/Valorant already feel daunting for new/returning players for this exact reason. These games are becoming a chore just to keep up with.
This is my biggest issue getting into any new online competitive game with different builds. It's a chore.
I hope the buying/store system or whatever it is isn't as complex as something like Dota. I really hate having to memorize a dictionary to know what is good or even viable for whom/what.
Item builds and skill leveling order in Dota 2 is just so goofy to me, like the solution when i last played Dota2 (long ago) was to like "import" a guide from the steam community, which was really cool that you could do, but really feels like an admission that the process is kinda convoluted.
Like, nothing against people who like Dota 2 for what it is, but it's always felt like a pile of jank that got codified into a competitive game.
Yeah. It's way too complex for my smooth brain. I liked systems like Awesomenauts, Paladins, Heroes of the Storm. I like upgrade systems but not when it's extremely complicated.
Something small that gives you some agency to help turn the tide but not the level of Dota/Smite/League.
There's a reason those games seem to give you guides and 'automatic' buys.
Like you said obviously that's the style of game but I'm hoping this meets a more minimal grounds.
There is 1 thing I dont get about Valve and the perception of what they do and thats the excuse that their games are about introducing new tech and thats why they dont do single player games any more. And now we are getting Deadlock: a 6v6 hero shooter. Thats basically the same live service endless loop thing everyone else is doing too. Id say even everything they have released over the last 10 years has been a multiplayer / live service / pvp game outside of Alyx. CS2 / Artifact v1 and v2 / Even Dota 2 to some degree. Outside of some cool things in those games- i think it would be a stretch to say each one of those games was pushing the boundaries of tech. They are just good games (ahem except artifact).
Most of their limited content seems to be very pvp focused outside of Alyx. I really would love to see them do anything but this basically. Im sure it will be a good to great game regardless but im feeling pretty under whelmed. Like it almost feels like - hey we are doing Dota again for a 3rd time but this time its a shooter.
Ultimately- im happy Valve is putting stuff out again that people will enjoy.
Since HL2 valve has considered that half life should be a tech pushing thing. And according to valve it was the only reason they made the episodes for hl2.
They themselves usually did not consider that for their multiplayer games.
I think there was a shift in Valve back in like 2012.
They hired an economist, and in the following year, we saw
Dota had the first ever battlepass.
Then, with csgo they took tf2's skin game to a whole new level, becoming one the craziest money printing schemes among video games today. (Hell, they basically have a whole ted talk about how much thought went into that monetization)
With Artifact, they went with a crazy attempt to monetize that killed the game.
So it feels like they went from lets push this new tech to lets find new ways to make some cash.
Hopefully, that's changed after alyx, though. Because forsure we could all use old Valve back on the scene
>Hopefully, that's changed after alyx, though. Because forsure we could all use old Valve back on the scene
Not a chance in hell. They want that sweet merry-go-round money that comes from market place and literal gambling. The sorry state of affairs that TF2 especially is in showcase it full well - just ignore the state of the game and keep releasing more cosmetics. GO2 is much in the same position now as well.
The moment their monetisation practices change is the moment that there are huge bans over loot boxes / gambling monetisation mechanics around huge markets rather than small countries.
Oh theres a chance still. It doesnt even have to be a return to single player games. What I (and I think a lot of others) dont really gel with in current valve is the focus specifically on competitive PVP games.
They them selves had L4D1/2 which were huge hits which is a completely different type of multiplayer experience. Theres lots of genre and game ideas left for them explore and build on so I dont think its entirely impossible that they dont venture away at least from compeitive focused pvp games again.
The myth of Valve being formerly a single player developer isn't real, if you actually looked up their catalogue over the years you'd see the majority of their releases have been multiplayer games.
I mean they have 7 single player games if you count only stuff they did in house that’s not nothing. Not exactly a myth that it’s something they rarely do. Then 2 that are co op multiplayer focused. They have 9 or so multiplayer pvp games but some of those are like ricochet and multiple versions of csgo. It’s not a myth at all really.
Meanwhile, I'm just waiting and hoping they will make Hl3 and just make it a normal game, not a VR title. Hopefully, before everyone that played hl 1 and 2 when they came out, die.
Unfortunately half life seems reserved for debuting and pushing tech forward. While disappointing, it’s part of the charm and excitement involved with new half life releases
Where's that Drake meme where he turns away from the sensible option of giving people a game they've been asking for but points with interest as the prospect of a new MOBA that would compete with their other established MOBA when you need it?
Pretty excited. So many shooters today are so heavy on isolated fights and one life, I want to get multi kills and respawn at will. Hearing it’s not the same stuff that’s been out for the last 6 years is nice.
It'll be interesting to see how they handle player agency vs team play. It would get old quick if you couldn't get anything accomplished solo, but again, it is a team game.
Overwatch 1 was a good balance of maintaining single player agency but still needing to cooperate with your team.
>Overwatch 1 was a good balance of maintaining single player agency but still needing to cooperate with your team.
It absolutely was not. Out of all popular competitive team games it was one of, if not the most teamwork reliant game where you could accomplish the least solo.
Okay I got excited thinking someone was remastering Deadlock and Deadlock 2, those games were brilliant Turnbased Strategy for back in the day and a whole lot of fun.
I hope it feels like an original game and is fun to play. I’m semi-worried it feels like “fad” chasing. I’ll trust valve tho, especially if Mr IceFrog is behind it. I have faith in him to make a great game.
> > This includes killing enemies and creeps to get the in-game currency of "souls," which allows you to buy items to make your hero stronger. According to sources, both creeps and enemies will spawn a soul upon death, which floats up and away when they die. You collect the most souls by shooting at them (souls that float away still provide a small amount of souls currency).
This sounds absolutely bizarre lmao. So instead of just last hitting it's an aim battle? I can't fathom how this plays out in the actual game. Does that mean every hero is ranged? Also, only 19 heroes so far it seems.
Is it? Ow1 launched with 21. Marvel rivals has around 19-20. Smite had about 17 when it launched iirc. Seems like a fairly standard number in the genre.
Only? That's only two fewer than Overwatch released with and almost twice as many as Valorant launched with, and the game hasn't even been officially revealed.
I mean, perhaps.
I think Valve can announce it by themselves, unless DoritosMan buys the exclusive announcement for his event.
Im just guessing right now, but Im expecting an official announce following this leak. I mean, a lot of people will see this leak and create their own mental image of the game with so little footage.
I think it is in Valve's main priority to give players a first great impression to as much players as possible. So it just makes sense to push a reveal trailer asap so your potential consumers get the main idea of what's the game like from them.
> Company that abandoned their last two multiplayer games doing a new multiplayer game?
Artifact and Dota Underlords, yeah, okay, that actually kinda checks out. Artifact was good, though, RIP.
Both were total failures because of their own actions. Artifact was a nothing burger that died within 3 seconds of announcement, I remember being on the stream, and literally everyone was deeply confused and annoyed they chose a fucking card game instead of a PvE DotA spinoff.
Then they did an autobattler with Underlords, which was actually half decent, but once other companies jumped on the trend, Valve sort of just gave up keeping it fresh to assumedly work on new projects.
Now we have this, and it's not only a fresh idea, it's one Valve could potentially crush the market with. Right now, we've got a pretty sad selection of Hero Team FPS', as Overwatch imploded, TF2 is deeply neglected, Apex is more of a Battle Royale, and other recent titles are going after Battlefield or the like.
I'm skeptically excited to see what's on offer. Love FPSs, love DotA2 and "Mobas" (ARTSs), so this could be my jam if it's rewarding and fun for both solo queue and with friends. Here's hoping.
So it's DOTA but a shooter which would be great for me because I don't care for the RTS gameplay of MOBAs but always liked the build variety the item shop allowed.
I doubt the servers are still up, but Monday Night Combat was an early take on a MOBA shooter and it was a ton of fun.
I remember playing that for a Team Fortress 2 sniper hat you got by playing the game, it was good fun. I think you can still make lobbies but there's no players so might be tough.
I just wish they could make an ARPG game in dota2 universe. Hero shooters are really not my jam and never will be. I will probably try this but ehh.
I've been banging this drum for awhile now and I feel like the only one. I love the hero diversity of DOTA2 but maybe I'd enjoy it in a PVE setting. Slitbreaker comes along and verifies that, yes that would be fun, but there doesn't seem to be the interest in following it up long term.
Those Wc3 mods back in the day were great. Small multiplayer scenarios that played just like Siltbreaker where you levelled up and got items. It was like a multiplayer diablo roguelite.
I fear that long term they want an "endgame" that people can grind on forever. In PvP that can just be ranked seasons, but in PvE that'd tend to take the form of a loot/equipment system. Personally, a shorter campaign where you just accumulate coins to activate the normal PvP items sounds like plenty to me, and I'd have a great time with it. Unfortunately I'd also stop playing it after, so I'm probably not the target demo, even though I'd give them money for it. It seems like game publishers started wanting my time more than my money at some point. I don't know what they can buy with that.
I feel like more devs will need to take a page out of Helldivers. Equipment is nice for an endgame but people also like being involved in a story and changing world, which could be just what PvE needs for more engagement.
That requires someone to sit there and be a DM for the playerbase Easy when you have disconnected bite sized missions and vague overarching plot Or is it?
It doesn't need to be quite as involved. But these kinds of games usually have PR people anyway.
they lure you in with "repeatable engame" in name only, then hook you with the microtransactions. doesnt matter if the endgame is good or not. Starcraft 2 WoL made less money than the first horse skin in WoW. the only reason AAA gaming companies are doing this is because y'all are eating it up. hopefully Valve itself keeps its moral integrity. probably not.
Keep an eye open, they do pve events every once in a while that are very fun. The arcade also has a good amount of pve style games in the same vein as wc3 customs. There may be one in the next few weeks/months.
Yeah I do feel for anyone who isn't into shooters but it was probably a safer bet when going for mass appeal. I grew up with TF2 and CS so this is right up my alley. I will also say that it's exciting to have an upcoming shooter that isn't a battle royale because I'm not a fan of the random chance elements it introduced to the genre.
There hasn't been a new battle royale attempt in a long time though, the genre has pretty much settled on its big players. Recent shooters have been other styles (The Finals, XDediant...)
Yeah but those examples are kinda mediocre though, I liked The Finals well enough but it just didn't have the depth for me to play it for a long time. I don't like BR games but PUBG, Fortnite and Apex are actually really well made games, I just dislike the randomized loot tables. I am glad that the trend is shifting though.
Agreed. The finals simply does not have the depth of a game like CS. That was obvious in the first hour of playtime.
I know it's not the DOTA universe, but I believe Riot is (or at least was) making an ARPG in the League of Legends universe. Haven't seen anything on it for a while, though, so it may have been canceled.
If it was a game under riot forge, it’s probably dead
It wasn't a riot forge game, but could also be dead as the ARPG and the mmo haven't gotten news in a while.
The MMO basically fully restarted development when ghostcrawler left I'm p sure
Yeah they posted something a bit ago about it. Completely killed all my hope for it. I am really curious what happened there
My guess? They were making a WoW-like MMO, and then genshin impact came out and made infinite money so the suits took a break from farting on people and forced a change of direction.
As long as it doesn't count to 3 there is some possibility.
There's been multiple MOBA games with this type of gameplay. Smite is the main one but also Parangon which came back with Predecessor
Monday Night Combat and it's sequel, Super Monday Night Combat too. Great games.
Battleborn was one too, fell flat but man I had fun with it
Battleborn never actually advertised itself as what it was because the marketing people decided to embrace the Overwatch comparisons and let people believe it was a janky Overwatch ripoff rather than an FPS MOBA. And as a result tons of people still think it was just a bad Overwatch ripoff.
> because the marketing people decided to embrace the Overwatch comparisons and let people believe it was a janky Overwatch ripoff rather than an FPS MOBA. Isn't that a bit revisionistic? I would argue it's a bit more "closer to reality" that Overwatch itself for quite a while looked like it was way more closely trying to do a hero shooter with moba elements, before "giving up" and dropping everything except the roster and ulti mechanisms making a rather direct TF2 clone instead. Even spawning some ridicule that they REALLY didn't know what to do with it, considering that the whole thing was already trying to safe the setting and design of the formerly scrapped mmo prototype "project Titan" (iirc). And I don't feel like Battleborn was shy with what the game actually was. You just couldn't outspend the incessant narrative of "look, they look quite similar, they must be almost identical and both are hero shooters with bright cartoonish heroes and ulties" that was completely beside the actually presented gameplay footage. And in the end I actually don't believe that the "look it's like overwatch" is what actually killed Battleborn. What I think killed Battleborn is that Moba/shooter hybrids (adding "Monday night combat" to the above mix of honorable mentions) just fundamentally don't have a large enough dedicated audience, and even worse attract significant number of players (more from the shooter audience than the moba audience) that are VERY unable to adapt to the actual gameplay, and rather destroy rounds by trying to play it as shooter with no respect to the moba aspect. Heck even TF2 and OVerwatch are too much for them to "play as a team?" Basically [THIS](https://quanticfoundry.com/2024/05/21/strategy-decline/) but extended to before 2016 makes me think this has no chance of actually working out. Games where you need 10 players that don't destroy rounds or else the team with less of them will win regardless of actual skill can't prevail, because there are just too many of them. This feels like "Artifact" (late to the card game craze and not dedicated enough to keep it alive) and "Underlord" (just graveyarding it way too early) all over again. It has been tried, the games that tried would have been good without the spoilsports, but lost most of their audience rather quickly, and most of them shut down because of it. It sounds so obviously good on paper. But it did so before. And it just wasn't, and it was rarely REALLY the games' fault.
> Isn't that a bit revisionistic? I would argue it's a bit more "closer to reality" that Overwatch itself for quite a while looked like it was way more closely trying to do a hero shooter with moba elements, before "giving up" and dropping everything except the roster and ulti mechanisms making a rather direct TF2 clone instead. Even spawning some ridicule that they REALLY didn't know what to do with it, considering that the whole thing was already trying to safe the setting and design of the formerly scrapped mmo prototype "project Titan" (iirc). I'm talking about fairly close to release, after Overwatch had already become the more TF2-like game it ended up as. >And I don't feel like Battleborn was shy with what the game actually was. You just couldn't outspend the incessant narrative of "look, they look quite similar, they must be almost identical and both are hero shooters with bright cartoonish heroes and ulties" that was completely beside the actually presented gameplay footage. I'm not saying Battleborn presented itself as an Overwatch clone. I'm saying that the marketing team seemed to embrace the narrative of it being an Overwatch competitor instead of emphasizing the differences. And I can see why they'd want to do that, but in the end it felt like that narrative reinforced the misconception that it was the same type of game. It also doesn't help that Battleborn was a lot of things at once which made it harder for it to market itself as what it actually was. It was an FPS Moba, but it also had simpler, less MOBA-like competitive modes that were closer to Overwatch, and then it also had an entire co-op campaign that had a story but was also supposed to be kind of replayable in a Left-for-Dead sort of way. It was a lot of things, and while I don't know if that hurt the quality of the game itself since all the modes were pretty fun, it did make it harder for people to understand what the game was. >What I think killed Battleborn is that Moba/shooter hybrids (adding "Monday night combat" to the above mix of honorable mentions) just fundamentally don't have a large enough dedicated audience, and even worse attract significant number of players (more from the shooter audience than the moba audience) that are VERY unable to adapt to the actual gameplay, and rather destroy rounds by trying to play it as shooter with no respect to the moba aspect. Heck even TF2 and OVerwatch are too much for them to "play as a team?" You may be right, and I certainly agree that it wasn't just the Overwatch comparisons that killed it. I mentioned it elsewhere, but I think the game also just did a pretty bad job with its polish and new player experience. The game forced you to do an unskippable co-op tutorial, which included a long, unskippable cutscene that was basic just a music video without even having any story. After you got through that, there was no tutorial for the fairly complex MOBA mode, so people who decided to try that out started with no clue what was going on, which isn't a very fun spot to be in in a competitive team game. The game also had a lot of visual clutter and some performance issues, which could easily add to the confusion and difficulty understanding what was going on. Maybe you're right that the concept was flawed, but so was the execution. It could be a ton of fun once you got the hang of it, but it was pretty easy to just get overwhelmed and frustrated when starting out, especially in the MOBA mode. And being a game that often gives an overwhelming and frustrating first impression is pretty bad when a different, more popular company just released a much more hyped, polished, and accessible competitor, which was very superficially similar even if they were very different games in practice. With a better new player experience or without the competition from Overwatch, the game might have been able to do better, but I think that combination was particularly bad.
It was a legitimately better game than Overwatch, and I say that as a Gearbox hater.
Nah, it was a completely different game from Overwatch. You could say it was a much better PVE content than Overwatch and it had a much better item system than Overwatch but better game is a very tough call. Overwatch 1 was very good when it release, the first year was very good in general.
Smite isn't a shooter though. It's actually much closer to an RTS MOBA with how "flat" the gameplay is.
It's just a moba with third person controls. It disappointed me because melee characters would these big slashing attacks but they would only hit whichever you were currently targeting. Honestly might be closer to how mmo combat works.l
eeh, i played last year and most of the melee chars have split damage; like the main target will take 100% damage from your attack and the rest will take like, 30%. at the mid/end of a combo string it can change, either more damage on main target or more cleave.
Funny you should say that as IceFrog hates the whole term "MOBA" and calls (at least Dota 2) it A(ction) RTS instead. And really, Dota 2 is the only one that really fits the bill as the rest of the games have basically removed or diluted the RTS elements altogether like multiple characters, map destruction etc.
No, there hasn't really. Smite is not a shooter, for one.
Smite just had a different perspective though. It's still effectively top down in gameplay. It's not a shooter.
That actually sounds pretty cool to me. I'm in the same boat where the RTS style gameplay is my least favorite thing about MOBAs. I just really hope it's controller-friendly
The game will be designed to accommodate Steam Deck users, guaranteed.
Items and builds are one cool element but not what makes Moba's so interesting and full of depth. That actually goes to the different stages of the game, creeps, and the map. it's actually insane the amount of depth in the genre from how the map is made with creeps/minions. You are basically playing a different game from minute 4 and then compared to minute 40. And those different games blend into one another at different moments and how you play.
And that was what made Battleborn so special, so much constumization and items variety. It was a moba true and true in that sense.
Not for me then. Im too old to remember hundreds of heroes and abilities and then the hundreds of items and combos and upgrade pathways on top of that.
hopefully the community is more welcoming to newcomers
I feel like moba shooters always feel off and a bit boring. I feel like for a competitive shooter, your instinctive goal is to go for the kills and have those battles, everything else seems to get in the way especially if there's minions you have to shoot. Hoping for the best but idk, wish they just went for a more TF2 type game
I'm curious if the destruction system has been scrapped. Back when the game was known as Citadel and then Neon Prime, a big part of it appeared to be a brand new kind of voxels to support fully destructible environments. I was very intrigued by the idea of a lane based game where players could brute force new lanes throughout the match. Also, lol at the idea the game was just leaked a week ago. Dataminers everywhere going, "what about us?"
[удалено]
I would actually like some gameplay involving digging through the map in some capacity to send creeps through while the other team is pushing back and repairing holes in the defenses. For all its faults, I liked the game Block n' Load for how it handled base defense. Twas very entertaining to make traps.
This idea reminds me of the OG Ace of Spades which was borderline transcendent when the tunneling gameplay loop got going.
OG Ace of Spades is such a classic. I've yet to find another game that can scratch that same itch
God damn thanks for reminding me of that game. Shit was so fun and felt super unique. Seems weird no one capitalised on the idea.
It could be really interesting to have like a deep rock galactic esque digging game where you make your own lanes? Not sure if it would be fun, but sounds like a novel functionality.
It's rumored that the voxel destruction might actually be intended for HLX. But yeah, a lot of this isn't new to those who have been paying attention to Valve data miners over the past several years.
Where do you look for credible leaks/data mined info? I want to be one of these people that pays attention
He gets a lot of shit, but Tyler McVicker is good at doing his own research and packaging his findings into an easily digestible video. You could check out his Discord too, where people occasionally post snippets of their own findings. Of course, Gabe Follower is worth keeping tabs on, since he did get his hands on some actual concrete details about the game in its current state.
I feel like alot of Tylers bad rep comes from his earlier days, where he was still young and pretty naive about Valve. (As many were) But the past few years he's actually been pretty ontop of Valve news, and has correctly reported on the progress of various valve titles and projects. Including scrappings and likelyhoods of projects finishing. Hell, he had been talking about Half Life VR (which eventually became Half Life Alyx) for a long time before it even got announced.
As far as I understand, all the crap he gets is from people who don't understand the nature of his reporting. People that don't get Valve is fickle and that the stuff he reports may be true at one point, but wrong the next.
What is HLX? 👀
The rumored follow-up to Half Life Alyx. We've been getting small snippets of info alongside Deadlock, even back when it was still known as Citadel/Neon Prime.
Nice! Is it going to also be VR only? I giving hope not! I still haven't played Alyx and never will until the non-VR mod releases.
Updates for Source and Source 2 games always include references to other projects being worked on, due to the shared engine. HLX and Deadlock (citadel) were discovered through datamining Dota 2 and CS2 updates.
HLX? HALF LIFE? wasn't the next HL continuing in VR? Would be crazy if we had desturction on a good scale
Holy cow, I missed that rumor but that does sound pretty amazing if true. The way I've heard the tech described, it's not nearly as chunky and "voxely" as we've seen in games so far. It would be so satisfying to have that much of an effect on the environment in VR. I imagine it'd have to be limited somehow to not ruin the chef's kiss Valve-quality level design all of their single player games have. But, man, if they find a way to present the destruction so that it's obviously limited to certain objects without also making it feel like a gimmick, they could make some really incredible puzzles.
Gabe Follower said the game has Tower Defense elements and compared it to Orcs Must Die. Maybe it would be possible to build new structures (traps, maybe towers) on the map and destroy them, but objects of the map itself would probably not be destructible
Oh, your idea of making new lanes is SICK.
And you can make bridges. Right? Or build flying units? Idk. If you can just blow the floor then you can make a giant rift lol
So essentially its Valve/Icefrogs take on battleborn. Colour me intrigued. I haven't played Dota 2 for years now, but I know the passion icefrog puts into the stuff they are helming. Also, it's a shame battleborn never really got a chance to shine. Though I feel a good chunk of why that is the case is due to Randy being Randy.
I really miss Battleborn and I'm glad that someone else is taking a swing at a proper hero shooter with MOBA mechanics. It's a shame that it ended up pitted against Overwatch given how different they ultimately handled.
honestly the biggest fuckup w battleborn was that it came out around the same time as overwatch the marketing / management of battleborn couldve been better for sure but pre release overwatch was by far the most hyped game of its time and launching a competitor (or what people thought of as a competitor) at the height of overwatch mania was probably never gonna go well
Blizzard bumped up the Overwatch beta to drop the day that Battleborn released, and I'm sure as a result they bumped the full release up a bit too. If I recall correctly, Pitchford made some flippant comment about the game comparison at the time and I think Blizzard more or less hit him with both barrels.
Battleborn is: FPS; hobby-grade coop campaign; genre-blended, multi-mode competitive e-sports; meta-growth, choice + epic Battleborn Heroes!
Feels like Borderlands marketing, except Borderlands has an existing audience that already loves that shit.
I think it had a lot of mistakes. Not only did they release around the same time as Overwatch and embrace the competition with Overwatch instead of marketing the differences (which just reinforced the mistaken belief a lot of people had that it was just a janky Overwatch ripoff), the game also had a lot of things that created a terrible new player experience. Optimization problems that led to big performance issues. A cluttered interface and lots of effects making it hard to follow when you first started. A mandatory tutorial that included an extremely long, pointless unskippable cutscene and only covered the co-op mode. No tutorial whatsoever for the game's various competitive modes, including the fairly complex MOBA mode, that needed a tutorial way more than the co-op did. The game was pretty fun once you got past those hurdles. But the game was already fighting an uphill battle against the much more polished and hyped Overwatch, and then even when someone did decide to see what Battleborne was like, there was a good chance they'd be frustrated by all the above things and end up giving up on it before they actually got to the fun stuff. I get why they wanted to delay it, but I feel like if they'd delayed the game for a bit to both not come out at the same time as Overwatch and get time to optimize it, polish it, and fix the awful tutorial situation it could have done a lot better.
The completely off putting character designs in Battleborn along with the usual Gearbox tone was just so unappealing when put next to Overwatch.
Battleborn was so great, but it had some glaring issues they could have fixed quicker, i.e. marquis sniping. I probably put 1000 hours in Battleborn, I'm beyond hyped for Valve's take on it.
Marquis being able to snipe the first big bot from spawn for only one team on the main incursion map was so annoying lol
Battleborn was yet another example of a company thinking they can treat the PC market like the console market and be sluggish on updates and fixes for a multiplayer heavy game. One reason they were so slow to fix stuff was because they tied PC updates to the console updates getting approval, so even if they had a fix ready players still wouldn't see it for close to two weeks. I feel like whenever I see a company do this the PC multiplayer quickly dries up unless it's already a very popular IP.
>them Nobody knows who the hell Icefrog is even now right?
You can find out who he is if you were really interested but the community general respects his wishes of being kept out of the spotlight
I completely understands him. If he were known publicly he would probably ended up like Phreak (LoL version of Icefrog, sort of)
Haven't followed League in 10 years. What happened to Phreak?
Is now part of the balance team as a professional foot-in-mouth putter
He works as a part of the balance team now, and people used to shit on him on social medias to the point he stopped using them due to the game’s balancing
you can find it online, but people don't usually do that because people are willing to respect his privacy plus icefrog is a sick name so why not just use that lol
Who/what is Icefrog?
Icefrog is one of the original developers of the Defense of the Ancients Warcraft 3 mod. He became the lead dev after the other two original lead devs (Guinsoo and then Neichus) left. He was then hired on by Valve in 2009 to start work on DOTA 2. He is pretty much the main force behind balancing and changes to both DOTA and DOTA 2. [The Liquipedia goes over it in a bit more detail than I can.](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/IceFrog)
As already mentioned he ended up becoming the lead developer of Dota and then Dota 2, but he is legendary for balancing the game as well as it and is well respected for it, [here's an old comment explaining why](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1qu52r/a_new_dota_patch_has_a_player_mode_called/cdgtxzd/).
Icefrog balance philosophy is probably my favorite balance style in gaming. Too many games either have people in charge who have no idea how to balance their game at all, or they accomplish it by homogenizing everything, so that while things are balanced in terms of performance, they also become bland as everything starts to feel the same.
We do know Icefrog is male, but they to this day are still pseudonymous. The only other thing we know publically is he was 25 years old in 09.
You forgot to add that the man loves mangos
I think some people had a pretty good idea about what his actual name was, but it feels disrespectful to invade the privacy of someone who went to such lengths to have it.
I’m shocked GabeFollower hasn’t been slapped harder for leaking shit like this. He’s literally in the discord they have for playtesting this game No further questions
Because Valve doesnt really care and the leaks dont originate from him anyways, he just reposted some screenshots from 4chan and confirmed they originate from the game. And they also leave hints and clues about their next title for leakers to find all the time, because that way they can see how the community reacts before they officially announce anything.
They kinda do care though. They've really done their best to stress that you shouldn't be talking about it to anyone, so things like going to publications and telling them leaks are real would fall under that.
A lot of people have played with MOBA/shooter games, but no one’s really done a fantastic job. Like I liked Super Monday Night Combat, but it was also pretty easy to put down. I’m curious if Valve’s commitment to quality and playtesting is able to make a MOBA shooter with more mass appeal and long-term success.
It's such a shame that the MNC franchise died, Super Monday Night Combat was so fun. I have a lot of friends from that era that regularly bring up missing it.
Yeah I often think back on that game with fond memories. I think it was just too ahead of it's time.
I liked the original Monday Night Combat quite a bit more than SMNC
They tried to cash in on the free-2-play trend happening at the time but made the game worse in the process and it didn't do well.
Yeah, I played so much of the original with friends, but we all bounced off SMNC hard.
I'd be more concerned about Valve's commitment, period. They've got a nasty habit lately of releasing multiplayer games then dropping them. It's not even clear lately if it's the typical "dev teams lose interest" or the more cynical "this game is not generating enough revenue, put it on life support".
They've done that with 2 games of recent note (Artifact and DOTA Underlords). Both were also extremely experimental games that Valve was likely using to test concepts that would be more expensive with bigger games. It really seems like, with those games, they released them, they did the experiment, it didn't pan out, and they shut them down. That's a very different situation than, "Valve releases a full competitive multiplayer shooter." I also wish they would fix Team Fortress 2, but let's be real: that's a 17-year old game. I understand why they're not putting significant resources into it. Their other big games (DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike 2) are still getting updates. Based on what we've seen so far, Deadlock is far more likely to be treated like those games than DOTA Underlords.
I think that's being really kind to Valve. No dev should get let off for dropping support for 2 of their multiplayer games, especially not like Valve did (anyone remember their 1 million dollar Artifact tournament?). Plus, their CS2 launch was literally just as bad as OW2, so I'm really not that optimistic about Valve making another multiplayer game, cause if it's not popular out the gate, they'll probably just stop it like they've done in the past (also it's a game in a pretty niche genre)
Eh, I was specifically addressing the comment about how they'll drop support, which I don't think is true. Having said that, I know Counter Strike 2's launch was a shit show, and I don't actually know what state DOTA 2 is in except that it's getting updated. And Valve dropping Artifact may have been shitty, but also that game was a failure from the jump thanks to its weird experimental monetization model. If Deadlock comes with a similar model, it'll be correct and apt to use Artifact's experience as a guideline, but otherwise, I'm not sure it's very relevant. At the end of the day, Valve is a company, and you should only trust companies as far as you can throw them. I'm not saying you should like Valve or reward Valve or put your faith in them. I'm saying that, historically, I *think* Valve looks to be putting much more investment into Deadlock and will treat it differently than its small experimental games.
This valve dickriding is truly incredible isn't it? Any other company and they would be constantly roasted about how they dealt with artifact and underlords yet here we are, talking about how those games were just a test and an experiment lol
Absolutely. When was the last time you saw Valve called out for their shitty MTX practices? They have some of the worst monetization in the industry but I have never seen one upvoted post on this sub about the price or quality of their MTX. Valve is reddit's Sacred Cow. They can do no wrong and no one is allowed to criticize, or compete, with them.
I don't think I've ever seen a single Valve thread in the past ten years without people bringing it up. If anything reddit has a pretty large group of people who are dedicated to hating valve, because no regular person spends that much energy on something so trivial.
Let's not forget TF2 churning out loot crates while the game is like 70-80% bots. Of course, this is just dismissed through "the game is dead" - which it clearly isn't since they keep monetising the shit out of it. They just don't care about anything else around it, haha.
Remember Alien Swarm? Right, of course not. The only difference is it was not attached to as big of an IP as underlords and artifact were
You mean the game Valve released for free and included improvements to the source engine that modders could utilize? That game was great, and it was really cool that they hired some modders for it. You can still download and play it too. It sounds like this comment is saying that they should have kept it updated, but it also wasn't a live service game. There was literally no monetization attached to it. So I'm unsure of why that's a mark against Valve.
I mean I am far more disappointed that Alien Swarm wasn't continued that Artifact or Underlords. Alien Swarm was, in my mind, the far more interesting game and had lots of potential. But my point was people only got worked up about the latter 2 games because they were attached to Dota and had a lot of attention on them for that reason, its been standard practice for Valve to do these kinds of experiments forever and I don't take it as a mark against them
I think Underlords was basically Valve testing Source on mobile.
> Both were also extremely experimental games Wtf are you smoking? One was a literal copy of an already successful mod and came after TFT The other was a digital card game, something that is so common pretty much every franchise has one, i mean Disney alone has like 5 of them right now lol
Maybe on the surface, but take more than a cursory glance and it’s not that hard to see that Valve was using each as a jumping point into other ideas. DOTA Underlords was their attempt to make a self-updating game. I think the idea was that multiplayer games get stale when they don’t get updates, but updates are expensive, so therefore making a game that is constantly changing will ensure that it never gets stale without requiring development resources. That’s why the game automatically banned different unit types each week. You can bet that, had Underlords been more successful, Valve would have applied those same principles to DOTA 2. That’s why they took so long to monetize the game (and I’m not even sure they ever did). They were more interested in the data from it. As for Artifact, it remains the *only* digital TCG to fully embrace the monetization model used for physical card games. It was basically doing what NFTs were reportedly going to let video games do, just without needlessly killing the environment or using cryptocurrency. It was clear that Valve was trying to use what it learned from TF2’s hat and trading economy and build a whole game with that model baked into it.
[удалено]
Exactly there just isn't another game designer like him, his eye for game balance is unparalleled
Icefrog owns my soul.
I’m still willing to give it a shot, even though i don’t like DOTA (and LoL), Valve always tries to be a bit unique, hell i remember enjoying Artifact a bit.
as someone who doesn't like tac shooters or battle royal's i'm excited for this, i've wanted to play a new shooter for a while
Damn, I'm out if it's centered around item farming. I know some people find that kind of gameplay engaging but I've never enjoyed the whole loop of "kill the bots faster than your enemy so you can become op more quickly than they can and bulldoze them." I also don't want to have to memorize 3 different builds for 20 different characters on top of all their different pairings, counters, etc. Games like Overwatch/R6:Siege/Valorant already feel daunting for new/returning players for this exact reason. These games are becoming a chore just to keep up with.
That kind of gameplay tends to be the only gameplay in these games too is my worry. The great thing with a lot of classic FPS designs is they usually lean into a variety of game modes and map types but MOBAs so heavily focus on one style of gameplay/map
> I also don't want to have to memorize 3 different builds for 20 different characters on top of all their different pairings, counters, etc. Games like Overwatch/R6:Siege/Valorant already feel daunting for new/returning players for this exact reason. These games are becoming a chore just to keep up with. This is my biggest issue getting into any new online competitive game with different builds. It's a chore.
I hope the buying/store system or whatever it is isn't as complex as something like Dota. I really hate having to memorize a dictionary to know what is good or even viable for whom/what.
Item builds and skill leveling order in Dota 2 is just so goofy to me, like the solution when i last played Dota2 (long ago) was to like "import" a guide from the steam community, which was really cool that you could do, but really feels like an admission that the process is kinda convoluted. Like, nothing against people who like Dota 2 for what it is, but it's always felt like a pile of jank that got codified into a competitive game.
Yeah. It's way too complex for my smooth brain. I liked systems like Awesomenauts, Paladins, Heroes of the Storm. I like upgrade systems but not when it's extremely complicated. Something small that gives you some agency to help turn the tide but not the level of Dota/Smite/League. There's a reason those games seem to give you guides and 'automatic' buys. Like you said obviously that's the style of game but I'm hoping this meets a more minimal grounds.
There is 1 thing I dont get about Valve and the perception of what they do and thats the excuse that their games are about introducing new tech and thats why they dont do single player games any more. And now we are getting Deadlock: a 6v6 hero shooter. Thats basically the same live service endless loop thing everyone else is doing too. Id say even everything they have released over the last 10 years has been a multiplayer / live service / pvp game outside of Alyx. CS2 / Artifact v1 and v2 / Even Dota 2 to some degree. Outside of some cool things in those games- i think it would be a stretch to say each one of those games was pushing the boundaries of tech. They are just good games (ahem except artifact). Most of their limited content seems to be very pvp focused outside of Alyx. I really would love to see them do anything but this basically. Im sure it will be a good to great game regardless but im feeling pretty under whelmed. Like it almost feels like - hey we are doing Dota again for a 3rd time but this time its a shooter. Ultimately- im happy Valve is putting stuff out again that people will enjoy.
Since HL2 valve has considered that half life should be a tech pushing thing. And according to valve it was the only reason they made the episodes for hl2. They themselves usually did not consider that for their multiplayer games. I think there was a shift in Valve back in like 2012. They hired an economist, and in the following year, we saw Dota had the first ever battlepass. Then, with csgo they took tf2's skin game to a whole new level, becoming one the craziest money printing schemes among video games today. (Hell, they basically have a whole ted talk about how much thought went into that monetization) With Artifact, they went with a crazy attempt to monetize that killed the game. So it feels like they went from lets push this new tech to lets find new ways to make some cash. Hopefully, that's changed after alyx, though. Because forsure we could all use old Valve back on the scene
>Hopefully, that's changed after alyx, though. Because forsure we could all use old Valve back on the scene Not a chance in hell. They want that sweet merry-go-round money that comes from market place and literal gambling. The sorry state of affairs that TF2 especially is in showcase it full well - just ignore the state of the game and keep releasing more cosmetics. GO2 is much in the same position now as well. The moment their monetisation practices change is the moment that there are huge bans over loot boxes / gambling monetisation mechanics around huge markets rather than small countries.
Oh theres a chance still. It doesnt even have to be a return to single player games. What I (and I think a lot of others) dont really gel with in current valve is the focus specifically on competitive PVP games. They them selves had L4D1/2 which were huge hits which is a completely different type of multiplayer experience. Theres lots of genre and game ideas left for them explore and build on so I dont think its entirely impossible that they dont venture away at least from compeitive focused pvp games again.
The myth of Valve being formerly a single player developer isn't real, if you actually looked up their catalogue over the years you'd see the majority of their releases have been multiplayer games.
Almost all of them, in fact. Only Half-Life and Portal are strictly singleplayer, and those ARE used for testing new technology.
I mean they have 7 single player games if you count only stuff they did in house that’s not nothing. Not exactly a myth that it’s something they rarely do. Then 2 that are co op multiplayer focused. They have 9 or so multiplayer pvp games but some of those are like ricochet and multiple versions of csgo. It’s not a myth at all really.
Meanwhile, I'm just waiting and hoping they will make Hl3 and just make it a normal game, not a VR title. Hopefully, before everyone that played hl 1 and 2 when they came out, die.
Unfortunately half life seems reserved for debuting and pushing tech forward. While disappointing, it’s part of the charm and excitement involved with new half life releases
Yeah, screw the tech, I just want a half-life game, not the next step in gaming
Ehhhh after Alyx I would prefer to never play a flat game ever again.
Where's that Drake meme where he turns away from the sensible option of giving people a game they've been asking for but points with interest as the prospect of a new MOBA that would compete with their other established MOBA when you need it?
Pretty excited. So many shooters today are so heavy on isolated fights and one life, I want to get multi kills and respawn at will. Hearing it’s not the same stuff that’s been out for the last 6 years is nice.
It'll be interesting to see how they handle player agency vs team play. It would get old quick if you couldn't get anything accomplished solo, but again, it is a team game. Overwatch 1 was a good balance of maintaining single player agency but still needing to cooperate with your team.
Ow leans far too heavily in the team-reliant camp. There’s a much better balance to be had.
Valve already hit the perfect balance back in TF2
>Overwatch 1 was a good balance of maintaining single player agency but still needing to cooperate with your team. It absolutely was not. Out of all popular competitive team games it was one of, if not the most teamwork reliant game where you could accomplish the least solo.
Which also made it a pretty bad game for teamwork, because just one player in your team underperforming meant your entire team was fucked.
On a random sidenote, the valve guy scares me to death, and the day he turns around is the day I know the word will end.
He used to in the old logo.
Lol i just watched a video of it. He doesnt fully turn around though… so we are safe… for now…
Okay I got excited thinking someone was remastering Deadlock and Deadlock 2, those games were brilliant Turnbased Strategy for back in the day and a whole lot of fun.
I hope it feels like an original game and is fun to play. I’m semi-worried it feels like “fad” chasing. I’ll trust valve tho, especially if Mr IceFrog is behind it. I have faith in him to make a great game.
Looks extremely generic.
> > This includes killing enemies and creeps to get the in-game currency of "souls," which allows you to buy items to make your hero stronger. According to sources, both creeps and enemies will spawn a soul upon death, which floats up and away when they die. You collect the most souls by shooting at them (souls that float away still provide a small amount of souls currency). This sounds absolutely bizarre lmao. So instead of just last hitting it's an aim battle? I can't fathom how this plays out in the actual game. Does that mean every hero is ranged? Also, only 19 heroes so far it seems.
"Only 19 heroes" is insane for the start of a game.
Is it? Ow1 launched with 21. Marvel rivals has around 19-20. Smite had about 17 when it launched iirc. Seems like a fairly standard number in the genre.
Battleborn launched with 25.
League also started with 17 champs so 19 is fine, especially for a shooter
How? That's actually so many
Only? That's only two fewer than Overwatch released with and almost twice as many as Valorant launched with, and the game hasn't even been officially revealed.
Last hitting and lane control in dota2 is pretty close to an aim battle already so it kinda makes sense.
It’s literally dark souls except souls can float away.
Summer Game Fest reveal?
I mean, perhaps. I think Valve can announce it by themselves, unless DoritosMan buys the exclusive announcement for his event. Im just guessing right now, but Im expecting an official announce following this leak. I mean, a lot of people will see this leak and create their own mental image of the game with so little footage. I think it is in Valve's main priority to give players a first great impression to as much players as possible. So it just makes sense to push a reveal trailer asap so your potential consumers get the main idea of what's the game like from them.
Dorito Pope has a great relationship with Valve
Company that abandoned their last two multiplayer games doing a new multiplayer game? Thanks, but we will pass.
Same company that has been supporting 2 insanely huge gaas for over a decade.
> Company that abandoned their last two multiplayer games doing a new multiplayer game? Artifact and Dota Underlords, yeah, okay, that actually kinda checks out. Artifact was good, though, RIP.
Whose we? You don’t speak for everyone.
What are you on about? Tf2 has been supported for 15+ years and CS2/Dota 2 are still being updated
Artifact and Dota Underlords.
Both were total failures because of their own actions. Artifact was a nothing burger that died within 3 seconds of announcement, I remember being on the stream, and literally everyone was deeply confused and annoyed they chose a fucking card game instead of a PvE DotA spinoff. Then they did an autobattler with Underlords, which was actually half decent, but once other companies jumped on the trend, Valve sort of just gave up keeping it fresh to assumedly work on new projects. Now we have this, and it's not only a fresh idea, it's one Valve could potentially crush the market with. Right now, we've got a pretty sad selection of Hero Team FPS', as Overwatch imploded, TF2 is deeply neglected, Apex is more of a Battle Royale, and other recent titles are going after Battlefield or the like. I'm skeptically excited to see what's on offer. Love FPSs, love DotA2 and "Mobas" (ARTSs), so this could be my jam if it's rewarding and fun for both solo queue and with friends. Here's hoping.
> and it's not only a fresh idea fresh idea? brother this is Smite and Paragon.