In other news, "trading GFWL for Steamworks" named the year's biggest new trend in PC development.
Dawn of War II: Retribution, the second expansion to Relic Entertainment's great Warhammer 40K RTS, will not ship with Games for Windows Live support as its predecessors did. Retribution will instead use Steamworks, which means you'll be able to invite your Steam friends into online matches, earn Steam achievements, and use Steam chat in place of the features offered by Microsoft's service (which mostly amount to Xbox achievements accessible in a PC game).
For Relic, this switch means that entirely new systems have to be built. According to the game's official community web page, Relic is in the process of creating an all-new matchmaking and ranking setup. The studio is also putting itself in a position to take advantage of all the things Steam allows its creators, including weekend deals, faster patching, and content preloading.
As previously reported, Retribution will be a standalone expansion that adds a major twist to its campaign component: other races, one of which will be an Ork faction. On the online side, Relic is giving each of the five races a new unit and is also adding a sixth new race to an already delectable roster.
Eager to get your hands on Retribution? According to the same post on the website, owners of Dawn of War II and Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising will be receiving beta invites for Retribution's online component next year. That's definitely not a bad deal for hardcore fans still taken with the games' strong fiction and narrowed, tactically satisfying approach to RTS design as a whole.
Maaaan I hope the new matchmaking system caters to sucky players like myself. I guess much of the problem with poor matching in this game has to do with how small the playerbase is, but windows live matchmaking seems to put way too much of an emphasis on quick player matches rather than actually finding people of around the same skill level. I'd rather wait a few minutes for a good match than enter a game where I'll get stomped within the first 3 minutes of the game. Or vice versa. Not that i stomped people all that often, but it happened, and it's no more fun than being stomped.
GFWL needs to die. Worst matchmaking service ever.
" It's about time they did this. Why the hell would you require Steam activation for both games, but have GFWL support? It's either one or the other. Not both. "
Actually they had the system work great. I was really amazed at the Steam/GWFL integration. Never had any issues with it. I hope that I can continue to use the GWFL with my existing install. New System: don't want.
@mazik765 said:
" @Tactical_Kill said:
" @Lukeweizer said:
"Interesting. No more achievements? "
Steam Achievements. "
I want real achievements :( "
This. Xbox achievements have points added in. Steam/PS3 just give you achievement, who knows if it has value or not? And plus nobody really cares about Steam/PS3 achievements, other than being better than nothing.
This. Xbox achievements have points added in. Steam/PS3 just give you achievement, who knows if it has value or not? And plus nobody really cares about Steam/PS3 achievements, other than being better than nothing. "
Now hang on a sec. I find PS3 trophies to be done very well. With Xbox Live you just accumulate points. While PS3 you gain a percentage which adds up to a level. The problem I find with Xbox Live achievements, is that they integrate it with a lot of things I don't think they should integrate it with. For example, Halo Waypoint. That's just a service, not a game. Another example is 1 vs 100. It is a game, but since the game is cancelled, people can't finish up what they started.
@ch13696: It's usually up to the developer what the achievements are. And I don't think Halo Waypoint has achievements. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Halo Waypoint just detects achievements across all your halo games and unlocks avatar awards and the like.
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