Category: IGN

Wayfinder does not intend to be a brainless loot-grind or a dispiriting digital roulette wheel. Digital Extremes, the studio behind Warframe publishing this new fantasy RPG, is aware of all the pitfalls that tend to sink modern multiplayer games; how, more often than not, it feels like the designers are actively trying to take advantage of its players. But after a few hours with the game, and a gaggle of rollicking dungeon crawls and hubzone idle time, it’s clear that Wayfinder is trying to harken back to a more wholesome age of cooperative monster slaying. If you too grew up on World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and Final Fantasy XI, Digital Extremes intends to bring you home.

In its most simple definition, Wayfinder is an MMO. Players take control of a slew of heroes — known as, you guessed it, Wayfinders — which are subdivided into classic tank, healer, and DPS roles. These characters come pre-equipped with names, backstories, and a League of Legends-style tray of three abilities and an ultimate, which means you aren’t going to be nurturing a mute, enigmatic player-character towards the level cap. The combat itself is steeped in that quasi-RPG magic that defines Destiny, Borderlands, and yes, Warframe. (Expect a lot of white damage numbers to come flying out of your opponents, but you’ll also be asked to aim your weapons, time your parries, and dodge-roll out of attacks.) You’ll be outfitting your roster of characters with a huge, interlocking talent tree, which will juice the integers of whatever build you’re currently targeting. In that sense, Wayfinder is well within the thrall of some of the most popular video games on the planet, but in the couple hours I’ve spent on the live servers, I haven’t grown bored by that familiarity.

A lot of the appeal can be chalked up to Wayfinder’s character design. The studio behind the game, Airship Syndicate, most recently worked on Ruined King, the League of Legends-based RPG, and you can see the influence of Runeterra’s gorgeous cartooning bleeding through. I spent most of my time with Senja, a yoked gladiator donning a spiky blonde haircut and a heavy, Kratos-sized ax. She served as the tank for most of our expeditions, and is buoyed by a mechanic where her abilities increase in potency as an unseen audience is whipped up into a frenzy. Senja showboats, flexes, and gestures to the cheap seats before she lines up another blow. When it connects, the crowd goes wild. It’s hard to step behind Senja’s controls without immediately adoring her vibe.

This is what Wayfinder will undoubtedly hang its hat on. Like Warframe, progression here seems to be mostly built around unlocking new characters, and from the ones I played, they all immediately glimmer with charisma and potential just like Senja. (Another Wayfinder I played, known as Niss The Shadow Dancer, is outfitted with a cocktail of shinobi-esque mobility options that make quick work of her enemies.) You’ll be taking this crew into the Overlands — a shared adventuring space for all players, like Blizzard’s Elwynn Forest or Bungie’s Europa — as well as “Lost Zones,” Wayfinder’s parlance for randomized dungeons, where you will carve through the modulated corridors in search of treasure and glory. Airship has made it clear that players will be given a ton of control over the loot that pops up in these dungeons to avoid the soul-killing grind of repeating the same instance, indefinitely, while searching for a furtive one-percent drop. The studio has learned from the mistakes of its forebears.

Everyone involved with Wayfinder kept hammering one point home over and over again: That this game, at its core, is an MMO. If Airship’s dreams come true, they’ll have created a lively realm of bustling General Chats, breezy dance contests, and the tragedies and triumphs of tough, mechanically-rich boss fights. By the end of my demo, it became clear that the people who made this game miss the golden age of the genre, and are desperate to recreate the conviviality of sharing a dungeon with a party of friends. From everything I’ve seen so far, Wayfinder looks to be up to the task.

Update 03/08/2023: Discord voice chat is finally available to PlayStation 5 users, allowing them to share voice channel parties with users on PC, Xbox, and mobile.

Revealed in a blog post, the “cross-voice” feature is available once users have linked their Discord and PlayStation accounts. This can be done by visiting the Settings menu on Discord itself (on PC or mobile), then selecting Connections followed by PlayStation.

Discord voice chat was originally released in PS5 beta, meaning it was available to select users who tested new features, but is now available to all.

Original Story 02/02/2022: A new PS5 system software beta has added Discord voice chat and Variable Refresh Rate support for 1440p displays, among a number of other upgrades.

Announced on the PlayStation Blog, the new system software is available for beta participants in the U.S., Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, and France. Its main feature is the addition of Discord voice chat, which allows cross-platform calls through the popular Discord system. Users will need to link their Discord and PlayStation Network accounts to use the service, and then begin a call on the Discord mobile app before transferring it to their console. It seems a little more fiddly than a standard PSN party, but will no doubt be very welcome to those who frequently play with friends who are on Xbox and PC.

The other headline feature of the beta update is Variable Refresh Rate support for 1440p resolution displays. This allows smoother visual performance when using a VR-compatible HDMI 2.1 display, provided the game supports Variable Refresh Rate. VRR can be enabled from your Screen and Video settings.

The new beta also provides a variety of smaller user experience-focused upgrades. These include the ability to share you screen directly from a friend’s profile card; a “Friends Who Play” tile that shows who on your friends list also plays the game you’re looking at; a new manual upload function for sending specific gameplay captures to the PS App; PS VR and PS VR2 filters for the game library; a new PS5 to PS5 data transfer function (available over Wi-Fi or LAN); and a notification pop-up for PS4 games that alerts you to any PS4 save game data you have in the cloud.

There’s also a limited U.S. and UK release for video capture voice commands. This allows users to say “Hey PlayStation, capture that” to save a video clip of gameplay. It’s the Xbox Kinect days all over again.

For more from the world of PlayStation, check out the games coming to PS Plus in February, as well as the news that the PS5 PS Plus Collection is being removed entirely later this year.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.

Just over two years after Riot Games announced its League of Legends MMORPG, the game’s executive producer is stepping down.

Today, executive producer Greg Street announced his departure from Riot Games in a Twitter thread.

Hey internet. Thanks for all the support over the past few months while I was afk

I am back now with some big news to share: I have decided to step down from my role at Riot Games

— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) March 7, 2023

“A combo of personal and professional considerations led me to down this path,” Street wrote. “We experienced some devastating personal losses last year and I want to be closer to my surviving family.”

However, Street assured Riot fans that the MMO spinoff is still in production.

“The MMO is in good hands and it’s the right time to hand over the reigns for the next phase,” he wrote. “I plan to stay in game development and I have had a number of exciting opportunities presented to me already. And I will be with you all playing the Riot MMO when it comes out.”

Street first joined Riot as the lead gameplay designer on the original League of Legends in 2013, according to Riot’s website. He announced the League of Legends MMORPG in 2020 via a tweet, though in 2022, he said there is “no guarantee” the game releases.

Of course, the League of Legends MMORPG isn’t the only League of Legends-related project Riot currently has in the works. In January, a spinoff called Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story was leaked, and last December, we got another look at the upcoming League of Legends fighter Project L.

Amelia Zollner is a freelance writer at IGN who loves all things indie and Nintendo. Outside of IGN, they’ve contributed to sites like Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun. Find them on Twitter: @ameliazollner.

Minecraft Steve is known for breaking things. He breaks blocks in Minecraft, he broke the internet when he was announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and now, the character is breaking the balance of Smash Ultimate’s competitive scene.

Steve (along with alternate costumes of Alex, Enderman, and Zombie) joined Smash Ultimate’s roster in October 2020 and was instantly recognized as one of the game’s most mechanically complex fighters. The Minecraft crew rapidly soared to the top of Ultimate’s tier list, with the competitive community generally considering the fighters to be among the best in the game.

Steve’s unique playstyle forced opponents to play Smash in basically an entirely new way, having to take his block-building mechanics into account while balancing the dozens of other mind games and considerations already on the table during a competitive Smash Bros. fight. Talks of banning the character have been bubbling up for a while due to his huge damage and dominating stage control, but the conversation has taken a turn due to a brand new discovery that makes Steve an even more fearsome foe.

Recently, Smash players discovered a new, potentially game-breaking technique within Steve’s kit that’s already caused dozens of competitive Smash events to ban the character. While the scene hasn’t agreed on a final, community-wide ruling either way regarding Steve’s future in competitive play, Steve mains that have invested countless hours in the character are worried about what comes next.

“It definitely is nerve-wracking and stressful hearing about the Steve ban,” said Kevin “RockMan” B., an Alex main from the SoCal region who’s been active in the Smash scene for the last five years. “A lot of people are worried about the time and effort that they put into their character now seemingly going to waste. And for people who do coaching or have a YouTube channel based around the character, [they might] need to change what they do, with many feeling they need to leave the game since they don’t have a character that will resonate with them as much as Steve did.”

‘Phantom MLG’: The New Technique that’s Changing Smash Bros.

So what is this game-breaking technique? The Smash community is calling it Phantom MLG, and it allows Steve players to instantly cancel the hitstun of many attacks, which can then lead to punishing combos on an opponent.

To put it simply, Steve can ignore one of Smash’s most basic concepts with this input. Usually when a Smash character is hit, they experience knockback, leaving them vulnerable and unable to defend against incoming enemy attacks. Phantom MLG allows Steve to completely prevent knockback, letting him instantly retaliate with a combo of his own. Currently, Phantom MLG is only possible with Steve, giving him and the rest of the Minecraft crew a huge advantage over the rest of Ultimate’s roster when this technique is used properly.

Since this move essentially punishes opponents for even attempting to hit Steve at low percentages, it’s a total game-changer. If you want to see what Phantom MLG looks like in action, check out the video below.

Have you seen the Steve hitstun canceling clips floating around?
Did you hope they were fake?

Well sorry to burst your bubble!

Introducing Phantom MLG: pic.twitter.com/OJ2GIM5Env

— XCido (@XCidoClipDump) February 25, 2023

An imbalanced character has devastating potential for a fighting game community, a concept the Smash scene is all too familiar with. Meta Knight in Super Smash Bros. Brawl was notoriously overpowered, leading to widespread bans of the character.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U had a big Bayonetta problem toward the end of its competitive life. Bayonetta was never banned from the game despite her evident advantage over the rest of the roster, leading to one tournament where fans left the audience in droves before the start of a Bayonetta vs Bayonetta Grand Finals. Banning a character is a situation the community doesn’t take lightly.

“Banning a character is always going to be unfair one way or another,” said Eric “ESAM” Lew, a highly-ranked Smash Ultimate Pikachu main. “I was part of the Universal Ruleset Committee in Brawl days back on Smashboards, I voted to ban Meta Knight knowing that a large part of the community played that character. You have to also realize that while banning a character sucks really bad for the people that play them, having a character that is obscenely broken be legal hurts all the other people that play, too. If everyone that mained Steve quit if he gets banned, I don’t know if that would be more than the people that quit because of Steve, if that makes sense.”

One tournament organizer who wished to remain anonymous said they believed a community-wide Steve ban is justified. But much of the community is still weighing all the options, as many Ultimate players are worried about history repeating itself with Steve.

“An imbalanced character creates a lot of frustration for other players, as it could feel like they’re being beaten unfairly,” said Sam “SBF” Brooks-Franklin, an Ultimate player who’s been competing since 2015. “In the context of this new Steve tech, players are abusing an exploit which no other character has access to… And as a result it is a very unhealthy mechanic. This is because Steve is widely regarded to be the best character in the game — with the character having already previously been in discussion to be banned — and now he’s been given an additional tool which makes the character even stronger and [more] polarizing than he already is.”

While some believe Steve should just be banned outright, some Steve mains are trying to salvage their character by suggesting only banning the Phantom MLG tech itself, rather than the entire character.

“The middle ground of ‘ban the glitch and not the character’ is one that comes with its own complications, as it is very difficult to monitor it,” RockMan said. “So despite what I may feel, it’s ultimately up to what the Smash Ultimate tournament organizers wish to do with Steve.”

Those complications include the impracticality of reviewing a lengthy match to verify if Steve used the tech, and players hesitating to report the move if there’s any uncertainty.

Honestly I think a Steve ban is the way forward. Whilst the current ‘verifying rule’ could be valid, TOs just don’t have time to review what could be up to a 7 minute game

And w/ how inconsistent multihits are anyway, feel like people might not report if they’re just unsure

— PXL | SBF (@imSBF) February 28, 2023

The concept of only banning the tech, not the character, will be put into practice within the next week. Collision 2023 is the next major Smash event that’s scheduled for March 10-March 12. We spoke with the tournament organizer, FinallyRJ, about how next week’s event will handle Steve in light of this week’s discourse. He told us that Collision has banned the Phantom MLG tech, but has not banned Steve from the event.

“I believe that Steve is, undoubtedly, the best character in the game,” FinallyRJ said. “However, this being said, being the best doesn’t constitute being removed. I try to take approaches that are non-destructive first and I believe that removing a character from play is a destructive choice for those who’ve invested time into learning the ins and outs… There have been strong arguments that the [Phantom MLG] tech can be managed within an event setting. We believe we have enough staff to test out this theory.”

If an opponent believes a Steve player illegally used the Phantom MLG tech during a Collision match, the player must save a replay of the battle and bring it to the tournament moderators for review. If it works, this could be the way forward for larger events, but smaller events with fewer crew members could struggle to review individual matches in a timely manner.

Players remain unsure about a ban

Still, Ultimate is a better-balanced game than Smash for Wii U before it. Even though Steve has long been considered a top tier character, he’s not dominating tournaments as much as Bayonetta did back in the day. This has some players unsure of if a ban is necessary at this time.

“Right now, I think it’s hard to say if Steve should be banned because of this tech,” SBF said. “Whilst it’s potentially game breaking, Steve is not overly dominating the metagame and we have not had any big tournaments where Steve players have abused this mechanic to win… I’ll keep an open mind for now as I’m interested to see if these new rules at big tournaments do actually prevent the usage of the tech though.”

RockMan and a handful of other Steve mains are attempting to go straight to the source: Nintendo. Players are contacting the Smash publisher through the company’s support line in hopes to receive one final patch specifically for this glitch.

This is one of our most recent chat that one of our members have with Nintendo Support

If more people manage to send reports we can try that Nintendo do something

It’s better to try to do this than do nothing

Just take 10-15 minutes to fill a reporthttps://t.co/lwzgMweoAo https://t.co/5GW1BFsPAn pic.twitter.com/2vS85lavYp

— BLZ | Many (@ManyManit4s) March 1, 2023

But given that Smash Ultimate received its last-ever combat balance update back in 2021, a fix for this issue seems like a longshot. However, Nintendo’s statement at the time of the final patch did state that, “This is the last update related to the balance adjustment of the game, except for dealing with problems,” so it all depends on if Nintendo views this issue with Steve as a problem worth solving. If the problem never gets solved, it seems Steve could break the hearts of those who have invested so much time competing with the character.

“I do hope that with more experimentation the glitch does not appear to be as impactful as it once was, or tournament organizers can find a way to monitor if this does occur in tournaments and provide a proper adjustment to it,” RockMan said. “But I and many others are fully prepared to either change the character we play, or drop out of the competitive scene entirely.”

Parts of these interviews have been edited for clarity.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer at IGN

Somehow, Asher Mir has returned.

With the launch of Destiny 2: Lightfall, players are diving into the game’s story and unearthing some hidden clues about where the story could go next. In a surprise detail hidden in one of Lightfall’s activities, one of Destiny 2’s more memorable supporting characters, the Awoken Warlock Asher Mir, makes a quick cameo — and most players have likely missed it.

Thanks to some Destiny 2 fans on social media and content creators on YouTube, the community has uncovered evidence of Asher Mir’s return in the game’s plot. Hidden in the Partition activity on Neomuna, which sees guardians explore a repurposed Vex network, Asher Mir’s digital self is located on a hidden platform, and he signals to the player to approach him. Though he does not speak, he gives the familiar glare he would give when players visited him on Io.

However, he has left a more direct message for players in a lore description on the Inside Line sparrow, which is available for players from the season pass rewards. When inspecting the lore for the Inside Line, there is a morse code message that says, “STILL ALIVE INSIDE NETWORK IDIOT KIDS.”

For those who played OG Destiny 2, Asher Mir was a prickly character who commonly made snide comments. In short, it’s classic Asher Mir.

As you fight your way through the unforgiving hordes of Remnant 2’s procedurally generated soulslike levels, you’re going to need bullets – and a whole lot of them. And that’s where the Gunslinger archetype comes in. With a six-shooter at their hip and enough lead to bury an army of baddies, this western-themed outlaw makes ungodly levels of DPS their calling card. After going hands-on with the Gunslinger myself, I pulled out the spitoon and took a seat at the campfire with principal designer Ben Cureton to talk about the Gunslinger’s marauding ways.

“So the Gunslinger in Remnant 2 is all about weapons,” Ben told me. “They’re the master of weapon handling, fire rate, and ammo generation. And the fantasy for the gunslinger is they’re constantly switching between weapons. They’re rarely running out of ammo. It still can happen, but it’s much more rare than another class. And they shoot just much faster on average than every other class in the game. They’re just a rain of bullets everywhere.”

Niantic has announced that Peridot – its blend of Pokémon GO, Tamagotchi, and Nintendogs – will launch on May 9.

Pre-registration for the game is also available now, and users who sign up on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and play by May 23 will receive an exclusive party hat cosmetic. Peridot has been in development for around three and a half years and is Niantic’s latest attempt to recapture the magic of Pokémon GO’s launch period in the summer of 2016.

“Our team has been hard at work making Peridots real,” said Niantic. “They are immersive, amazing magical creatures that eat, sleep, play with toys, explore their environment, get bored, develop unique personalities, and are always in need of a loving adopter like you.”

Each Peridot also holds a combination of unique traits that change its colours and features, with Niantic promising an “infinite number” of different looks. While the aim of the game is to raise and have fun with a Peridot, players can also take on the role of Keepers to breed and discover as many types of Peridots as possible.

“When it comes to the day-to-day however, remember that it’s every Keeper’s job first and foremost to ensure their Dots are happy, healthy, and loved,” added Niantic.

“Feed your baby Dot, play with it and take it on adventures. With enough care and effort it will grow into a teenager and then an adult that can Hatch a new generation of Dots. It’s a circle of life in a way, except you can keep track of all your Dots and never have to say goodbye.”

Peridot was announced in April 2022, with Niantic seemingly using the ups and downs of Pokémon GO’s years on the market to create an improved experience from the get-go.

The company said it would do its best to provide a positive experience for rural players – who were often unable to compete in bigger events like raids – and confirmed Peridot would include microtransactions, which were also, at times, a sore spot for Pokémon GO players.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Former Riot Games executives have launched a new studio called Believer to create a next-generation open world game based on an original IP.

The Believer Company’s leadership team includes former Riot Games vice president Michael Chow as CEO and former executive producer of League of Legends and Riot co-founder Steven Snow as chief product officer.

Believer has secured $55 million in funding to build its development team and first project, which it promised to be a “next-generation open-world game, anchored by an original IP, [with] stories where player choices matter, and gameplay systems that bring players together rather than pushing them apart.”