Community MetaSteam | June 2023 - halfway through the year

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C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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The only thing I'm actively excited to see is Persona 3 remake and the P5 game. As we've already seen these, I'm actually not that interested in the Xbox show to watch it live. I'll check out the announcements tomorrow.
 

manchego obfuscator

MetaMember
Jan 23, 2020
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Microsoft/XGS has an awful lot of first-party games that were announced two or more years ago but haven’t been seen since then:

Everwild
Avowed
Hellblade II
Outer Worlds II
Contraband
Perfect Dark
Indiana Jones
State of Decay 3
Fable

not expecting to see every one of these today, but we really ought to be seeing a lot of them at this point
 
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spindoctor

MetaMember
Jun 9, 2019
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Yeah, Diablo 4 has some funky difficulty balance and level scaling is trash. You quickly realize that levels means shit and your real power progression is through skills and loot.
Balance is the weakest point of the game.
I was getting frustrated by the level scaling by the end of the D4 campaign. It feels bad when the final boss does just as much damage and takes just as much time to kill as the very first boss you fought in the game. That was a stark contrast with even D3 where fights like Belial and Diablo were genuinely hard. There was so much incoming damage in those fights that you had to play really well to win. This was admittedly at Inferno difficulty which was completely imbalanced in the opposite direction but, you know, we did it, and it felt like an amazing achievement.

Anyway, the good news is that the difficulty ramps up immediately after the campaign when you enter the capstone dungeon. I went there at level 48 (2 below recommended level) and it was genuinely difficult for me. At nightmare difficulty it's like yep, the training wheels are off now, welcome to Diablo. You have to have proper gear and you need to farm up aspects and your build matters, your stats matter. Feels refreshing to arrive at this stage of the game.
 

Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
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I was getting frustrated by the level scaling by the end of the D4 campaign. It feels bad when the final boss does just as much damage and takes just as much time to kill as the very first boss you fought in the game. That was a stark contrast with even D3 where fights like Belial and Diablo were genuinely hard. There was so much incoming damage in those fights that you had to play really well to win. This was admittedly at Inferno difficulty which was completely imbalanced in the opposite direction but, you know, we did it, and it felt like an amazing achievement.

Anyway, the good news is that the difficulty ramps up immediately after the campaign when you enter the capstone dungeon. I went there at level 48 (2 below recommended level) and it was genuinely difficult for me. At nightmare difficulty it's like yep, the training wheels are off now, welcome to Diablo. You have to have proper gear and you need to farm up aspects and your build matters, your stats matter. Feels refreshing to arrive at this stage of the game.
after the capstone dungeon you get immediately powerful drops in WT3, you will not find anything challenging for at least 10 levels because you have access to the max itemlevel of WT3 at the start. This, you feel until level 60-ish were you get weaker and weaker with every level because you don't get better items.
This, again gets totally easy again with level 70 after you switch to WT3 where the final itemlevel will drop (820) it can immediately drop in level 70 and you feel powerful again, but from 80-95 you get weaker and weaker because you already could find the best items with level 70
Scaling stops with level 95, so this is where you get stronger again.

Also, resistance is completely broken and doesn't help for shit, Armorstacking is the only way to defend.
 

spindoctor

MetaMember
Jun 9, 2019
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Yea I've read that elemental resistances aren't working properly. That's a bug they'll have to fix.

I don't get the other part of your complaint though... You get access to better items at the start of WT3 and WT4 but it's not like you instantly get a perfect set right there. You still need to farm up proper items for your build with the correct stats and bonuses. In theory, your power grows on a curve as it should. I guess I don't understand how you get immediately powerful at 50 and 70 and then good items don't drop again for you at 60 and 80 onwards. And if indeed the difficulty does increase as you level up, that's fine too, because the alternative is a smooth difficulty curve which we saw with level scaling and we definitely don't like that right? I don't know, I'm still early in Nightmare. Will have to see how the difficulty progresses from here. As of now it's better than the entire 1-50 journey.
 

Alextended

Segata's Disciple
Jan 28, 2019
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If you don't want the auto localized content youtube seems to serve for this Xbox showcase you can post the link on a Discord server & watch that embed :shrugblob:
 

ezodagrom

JELLYBEE
Nov 2, 2018
1,888
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Portugal
www.youtube.com
Sonic Superstars is being developed by Arzest (Balan Wonderworld, Yoshi New Island), but since the president of the studio is the original character designer for Sonic and directed Sonic CD, hopefully they won't mess it up. :x

Sonic Team wanted to work with Christian Whitehead (Sonic Mania), but plans ended up not working out, I guess Christian Whitehead's studio, Evening Star, was already working on their own original project at the time they were approached.

Tee Lopes is back with helping with the music.

Initial impressions from people that tried a Summer Games Fest event demo were positive.

 
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Hektor

Autobahnraser
Nov 1, 2018
6,154
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20 minutes til the xbox showcase, we gonna do the chat again? OF COURSE WE WILL
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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Could be a huge showcase given MS apparent confidence and the incredibly low ceiling this year.
Then again…
 
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Mivey

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2018
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It doesn't matter much either way as the narratives have already been written.

Haters will continue to moan about BGS losing touch and dumbing down.

Fans will continue to eat it up and spend hundreds of hours playing.

No need to show any extended gameplay, the scripts have already been written.
As I said, I hope it will prove to be a good game, ultimately. It's pretty accurate to say that Bethesda is doing their own kind of RPGs, with not a great focus on character or story writing (cue the *sarcastic options in F4), but instead making sure the games are as immersive as possible with exploration and apparent player choice being the key. I say "apparent" because even in Skyrim it feels a bit flat once you understand how little the game cares about its own setting and how little true reactivity there is to your choice. You can find evidence that perhaps the big rebel leader is actually working with foreign spies, but can you bring that up, does the script in the game really react to you? Nope. Sure you can help one side "win" the conflict, but what really changes in the game world? Nothing, it just says in your quest log that you "won". Hurra.

As such, I expect Starfield to be a technically impressive game, with immense size, tons of quest (of sometimes quesionable depth), and some functioning space shooty bits if Bethesda actually spent enough time with Q&A and their aging engine isn't falling apart. But I also expect it to leave me wanting of games from other studios, like Larian. And that's ok! There's only so many hours in the day, and so much a developer can focus on, and clearly Bethesda knows how to make games that sell like crazy.
 

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
32,404
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yeah, get your butts in here (and in the chat), everyone

 

Amzin

No one beats me 17 times in a row!
Dec 5, 2018
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That Avowed trailer made it look a lot like Dark Messiah 2 to me.

Also shame about 33 Immortals as I really like Sundered, although it was not without flaws. I am skeptical of the premise anyway since, y'know, player populations
 

Arc

MetaMember
Sep 19, 2020
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P3R site only mentions Xbox and Windows for now. Before freaking out I should mention that Persona 5 Royal's additional platforms took several days to announce.
 

Derrick01

MetaMember
Oct 6, 2018
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Kinda shocked at how bad that show was overall. I mean the games could turn out ok but after 6 years all you have for Fable is essentially a CG trailer? I know I know "in engine", but that may as well have been CG it showed nothing useful.

Same with the Hellblade 2 trailer- revealed 4 years ago and we still haven't really seen proper gameplay or how the combat has evolved. That trailer today was an absolute piss take.

Avowed I was really shocked at how generic it looked. I'm 100% certain if you didn't show obsidian's logo people would have been going is this some embracer-published fantasy game? I even saw one person think it was ESO at first lol. It really didn't look like anything special.

Now granted I'll still say this was a point or two better than sony's disaster but sony gave these guys an open dunk and at least IMO they botched it. They had a bunch of names here but most of those names had very little to show after YEARS of being missing in action.
 
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Sobatronix

MetaMember
Mar 9, 2021
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Man that was actually a great showcase. Wished it would feature Fable gameplay and No Gears collections. But Starfield looked amazing and so did Avowed.
 

Pommes

Hey you! Have a nice day!
Jun 4, 2019
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Avowed started as Obsidian's Skyrim, but evolved to focus on depth over breadth, 'where Obsidian really shines'
For Avowed, the focus is going to be specifically on your companions, and how their story relates to the driving narrative of the game. "We could go off and create an 8km x 8km open world and then deal with all the consequences of that—because that makes it a different style game. But we want to tell more confined stories that the player can experience with their companions, and then move from part of the world to part of the world. And, like I said, in the end, that's us."
I see that as a big positive.
 

yuraya

MetaMember
May 4, 2019
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As long as all those 2024 titles release next year without delays it will be a very good showcase. But I'm guessing at least 1/3 of them gets delayed.

Fable gameplay is probably happening this time next year with a fall 2024 release.

They showed a lot of gameplay for Avowed so I wouldn't be surprised if it releases in late spring year.
 

Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
3,315
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Yea I've read that elemental resistances aren't working properly. That's a bug they'll have to fix.

I don't get the other part of your complaint though... You get access to better items at the start of WT3 and WT4 but it's not like you instantly get a perfect set right there. You still need to farm up proper items for your build with the correct stats and bonuses. In theory, your power grows on a curve as it should. I guess I don't understand how you get immediately powerful at 50 and 70 and then good items don't drop again for you at 60 and 80 onwards. And if indeed the difficulty does increase as you level up, that's fine too, because the alternative is a smooth difficulty curve which we saw with level scaling and we definitely don't like that right? I don't know, I'm still early in Nightmare. Will have to see how the difficulty progresses from here. As of now it's better than the entire 1-50 journey.
it means that you have access to the best gear level from the start at WT3 and 4. You will change your legendaries to yellows because they have 500 more dps, until you find a legendary or unique that can upgrade your yellow.
That is all fine and dandy if there was no level scaling, but there is, and you will fight against the creeping power-up of the monsters while you already are decked out in max-item-level gear and need to find gear that is a tiny upgrade statwise or a massive upgrade affix-wise (and is good for your build)
You can soft-lock your character because you have all the power upgrades in the first few levels of a WT and then you get weaker every level unless you are lucky.
There is no constant or linear gear progression, you get a massive boost at the start and then you grind against steadily more powerful mobs.
Without levelscaling you could farm at a level that is appropriate for your playstyle and gear, but that's not possible.
 
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