PAX: Halo 4 Updates Grifball and Oddball

If you've ever wanted to throw your skull before, you'll enjoy the changes planned for several multiplayer modes in Halo 4. 343 Industries announced today that players will be able to pass and catch the ball/skull/bomb in both Grifball and Oddball during its Halo panel at PAX.  This news comes a day after the announcement of Capture the Flag (CTF), and a new War Games map, Exile. Similar to allowing the flag carrier to carry a Magnum in CTF, you'll also be able to weild a pistol while carrying the ball in Oddball. Assassinations are also possible which apparently vaporzize your enemies.

Here's the two modes in action.

Both modes themselves are carry-overs from past Halo games, Oddball featuring classic "earn points each second you control the ball" gameplay, while Grifball arms players with Gravity Hammers and Swords in a bid to score points by carrying the ball to the other team's goal.

Including a weapon in CTF makes enough sense given how wide open t=most CTF-ready maps are, but I wonder about adding a pistol to the ball-carrier mix given the typically smaller-sized arenas best suited for Oddball. There's something about relying solely on melee attacks that's always balanced out the gameplay, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays (343 only showed the mode off via its presentation, it wasn't playable).

In case you missed it yesterday, here's what we thought of the new CTF mode.

Casey Lynch is Editor-in-Chief of IGN.com. Follow his non-sequitur ramblings about video games, '80s films and Protest the Hero on IGN and Twitter.

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Diablo III Adding 'Paragon System'

Class changes and buffs to Legendary items aren't the only changes coming in the 1.0.4 patch for Diablo III. Today Blizzard detailed a new Paragon System on the game's official blog, something it hopes will go along way towards alleviating the issues people have with Magic Find (and more specifically gear-swapping) and giving level 60 players something to earn.

The solution is a set of sweeping changes collectively referred to as the Paragon System. Once it's implemented all experience earned after level 60 will be put toward 100 Paragon levels. Per today's post, each level gives you:

• Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you’d gain from a normal level
•  3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find

Visually, earning Paragon levels will result in "a distinctive increasingly-impressive border" around your character portrait "[denoting] your Paragon progression."

Game Director Jay Wilson, author of today's post, says "We know that a lot of you out there are level 60 -- maybe on multiple characters -- and this system provides a way to make progress every time you log in to the game."

On top of other bonuses, Blizzard will also be making the Nephalem Valor bonus give a 15% experience bonus per stack, help you earn Paragon levels. As for how much longer you can expect these levels to take, Wilson writes, "The first Paragon level should take about as long as it took most players to get from level 59 to 60, and the experience requirement will rise from there. The time to reach the upper Paragon levels approximates the long-term time investment required to get a level 99 character in Diablo II."

One of the other major goals for the Paragon System is to eventually "transition away" from having Magic Find on items. Eventually Wilson wants to "slowly and gently move Magic Find off of items in the future," but without doing, "so in a way that doesn't flip the entire game end-over end." Magic Find and Gold Find will now be capped to 300% before Nephalem Valor in 1.0.4, which means, "you'll hit the cap when you reach Paragon level 100." Thus as you level in Paragon levels you can start to remove Magic Find items, eventually weeding them out completely.

To see Wilson's words for yourselves, check out his post on the official Diablo III blog.

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Steam Updates Groups, Enhances Content Management

Valve has announced more new updates to the Steam Community, making changes to group pages as well as how users manager their uploaded content. Valve says that over 2.5 million groups have been created, and their pages will now receive an entirely new layout, adding a group overview, friend showcase and new group discussions.

Discussions can be public or private and users will have “complete moderator control” over their own groups, including the ability to create sub-forums, add moderators and delete posts. Groups can also list their favorite games and a default language can be set.

Valve has also added a new way to keep track of screenshots, replays, videos linked from YouTube, workshop Items and Workshops on your profile page. All content will be available for users to display or manage, with an image wall that will offer multiple ways to view your uploaded screenshots. Players will also be able to favorite screenshots in order to find them later or share them with friends.

Today is the third day of a week’s worth of Community updates that Valve is rolling out this week. The first update came on Monday with the introduction of Game Hubs. For more details about all of the new features, check out the Steam Community’s official site.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

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