“Basically, fast-paced interesting ADHD gameplay. Combination of Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, Valorant, Smite, Orcs Must Die.”

That’s how notable Valve leaker “Gabe Follower” describes Deadlock, a Valve game that is seemingly in playtesting at the moment, for which a few screenshots have leaked out.

The game has been known as “Neon Prime” and “Citadel” at prior points. It’s a “Competitive third-person hero-based shooter,” with six-on-six battles across a map with four “lanes.” That allows for some of the “Tower defense mechanics” mentioned by Gabe Follower, along with “fast travel using floating rails, similar to Bioshock Infinite.” The maps reference a “modern steampunk European city (little bit like Half-Life),” after “bad feedback” about a sci-fi theme pushed the development team toward fantasy.

      • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        Yeah, but they did Half-Life: Alyx after that and they reshuffled the cliffhanger ending of Episode 2 via the G-Man’s cosmic reality altering shenanigans in it

        Tbf, it would actually be kind of funny if they also left the new cliffhanger ending sit unresolved for 15 years

        • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          Even the hypothetical episode 3 draft it ends on a cliffhanger, I’m not sure Half Life can ever have a non cliffhanger ending if even the main writer, freed of all development concerns, writes a cliffhanger ending.

      • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        Kind of, but he later publicly regretted doing so cause he said that for all the previous HL games, the story was built by him and the dev team in tandem, so it was more like an absolute first draft just by him, and he thought it was unfair that he decided to just abandon their previous collaborative way of working to announce himself as the authoritative voice on Half Life.

  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    No game has convincingly built on the actual foundations of Team Fortress 2 yet, and now even Valve seems to think the design of that game belongs in the dustbin, compared to just trend chasing.

      • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        There are similarities, but Overwatch bears way more similarity to a MOBA with a wide variety of heroes using hard coded interactions rather than TF2 which uses a smaller selection of classes with variety within the class, who usually have some degree of shared systems and interactions.

        TF2 still gets new player tech discoveries due to the design being more open in the classes interacting with the map and each other. The issue kind of is that this is due to TF2 being “antiquated” in having not been designed for competitive professional play, and having been essentially put on maintenance mode, so there are less devs interested in going in and “fixing” things.

  • daniyeg@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    never liked moba mechanics especially “lanes” aka let’s just make one map and force people to play in just one part of it because their favourite character can only play a certain role and that certain role can only play on one part of the map. and there’s too many games and labels being mentioned here if this is accurate i doubt it’ll be any good but we’ll see.

  • SSJ2Marx@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Y’all remember Battleborn? That hero shooter with minions and lanes that released right at the same time as Overwatch and got absolutely buried? This reminds me of that.

    That said, I feel like if anyone can knock OW2 out as the top hero shooter, it’s Valve - and if there’s any good time for them to do it, it’s now. Although for my money the best take on the genre is still Titanfall 2.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    The maps reference a “modern steampunk European city (little bit like Half-Life),”

    Does anyone here consider Half-Life to be steampunk? Lmao

    • CredibleBattery [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      they probably got confused and meant to say Half Life 2’s art direction, which was headed by the same guy who was behind the art direction of the first Dishonored game.

      While both games sport a lot of incredibly similar stylistic choices, only Dishonored fits that ‘‘european city steampunk’’ description, and even then, D1 is more Oilpunk than steam.

      spoiler


    • TraumaDumpling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      yea, how is Boneworks/Bonelab still the benchmark for VR gameplay. like sure the game structure and level design is basically at the level of a tech demo/tutorial, and Bonelab loading times are basically unplayable for a standing VR experience, but the gameplay (world interaction, physicality, movement, etc.) is good enough that i can’t really get into other VR games without being very disappointed at the lack of arms/body/legs and physicality. Half Life Alyx sucks in comparison, i hate playing as floating hands with slow walking or teleport movement with no climbing (the jump is a teleport move). pretty much the only other VR games i like at all are vehicle sims like VTOL VR or Iron Rebellion.

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        Ah, I’m more of an HL:Alyx person. Imo, the arms and body just don’t add anything until you’ve got full body tracking and the whole physics based thing just doesn’t make sense without force feedback. The whole power of VR is create a world that you can do things you couldn’t do in reality, for me. Almost all my VR equipment I bought used except for some bhaptics stuff which performs brilliantly under Alyx. It wasn’t bad in Boneworks and did add to the experience, but Alyx is so top tier in its development and story that I just don’t really compare it to Boneworks.

        • TraumaDumpling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          HL:A is definitely more of a ‘finished game’ with a complete story and more traditional level design, boneworks/lab campaigns are basically a ‘find the spawnable unlock’ game that also tutorializes you, expecting you to ‘find your own fun’ with mods and spawning things in ‘sandbox’ style levels. I personally never had a problem with the body tracking thing, i only have the headset and controllers and i’ve never really had the in game models get noticeably out of synch. the way the legs and body move according to physics/collision rules just makes sense to me even if it doesn’t perfectly line up all the time. The only problem i ever have is getting motion sickness using the artificial turn controls but i have a wireless attachment for my headset so that rarely comes up. sometimes the collision and physics in boneworks/lab makes reloading guns a bit less graceful than games like Pavlov VR but the climbing and real-time jumping and sprinting and physics collisions just make me feel so much more like a part of the game world. speaking of immersion, nothing breaks it more for me than floating hands and no body/legs, especially in VR but also in traditional 2d screen games. combat in Half Life-ALyx comes across as almost a static shooting gallery, since you walk so slowly with no sprint or real-time jump and can’t really leave your piece of cover in a fight without exposing yourself moving slowly through the open or teleporting and ruining immersion. I much preferred the Half Life 2 VR mods personally.

          • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            7 months ago

            I haven’t gotten to HL2VR, but I hear good things. Maybe it’s from growing up on Unreal Tournament’s telefrag mechanic, but I’m actually a big fan of teleport locomotion; that shit’s like a super power to me. I come into the battle scenes flashing all over the place like a combination of Nightcrawler and John Wick. Unfortunately, I never really get to play much nowadays.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Competitive esports nonsense

    Why does Valve bother making anything these days? Just sell games and make billions of dollars and leave good games to other studios

  • Owl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    If they want to copyclone their way into esports relevancy they should just rip off an indie one honestly. Do the 3D VR version of Killer Queen, I dare you.

  • CrackBurger [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Don’t care. Valve games are cringe

    Half life (overrated nostalgia bait)

    Portal (overrated soy nostalgia bait)

    Counter strike & team fortress (free but fascist)