I’m a dota 2 veteran, 6k hours or something embarrassing like that, but it’s been me and my friends primary outlet of hanging out for forever and it’s a lovely game.
Got invited to deadlock, wasn't that interested but wanted to have a go anyway. Damn, it actually goes kinda hard? Character designs are awesome, i like the moba elements (I could see how you wouldn’t be if you don’t have a background in them tho), the controls feel great, etc.
I guess i was just surprised by how much I enjoyed playing it despite being pretty bad at it and having no idea how to evaluate items.
Thoughts?
never bet against icefrog
i don't know how best to describe it but valve's balancing and design philosophy is just fun, it doesn't have this sort of sanitised feel to it that say riot or blizzard have with their games where things have to be 'fair'
I didn't care for it. Very much 'skill issue', but all the games I've played so far against people has felt like I lost the game in the first 10 minutes, and then had to endure 30 minutes of getting my balls stepped on for the game to end, since there's no surrender option, and didn't feel like there's any 'comeback' mechanics, but also the winning team feels like it takes a while to actually secure victory.
Compared to League of Legends (which I haven't played in years, but did rack up many hours back in college), where a) you can surrender, and more importantly b) its possible to win quite quickly, both from just being ahead, but also from doing a cheeky 'backdoor'.
Deadlock, it feels like the 'securing victory' route requiring minions, and also just being a multistage affair with mandatory wait periods in between, just makes it feel like a slog, both being on the winning or losing side.
I had no interest in playing but my brother got an invite so i thought fuck it send me one lets see what its like. I played for a few hours and it seemed pretty good. Gonna give it a go with friends next but i wasn't expecting to play what i had played. I guess valve can take the most tired ideas and make them feel interesting and tight to play, it makes me wonder if artefact was actually any good
Artifact was 100% good. I’ve played MTG at a competitive level and artifact had some really interesting ideas and gorgeous art/lore. I genuinely think it didn't deserve to flop. Games were just a tad too long and exhausting, so it got tiring to play quickly
Omg I honestly thought I was the only person in the world with this take lol. Great card game, imo it was only the monetisation that killed it
Games were a bit too much in terms of cognitive load imo, but it was not beyond saving by any measure
I havent really kept tabs on Deadlock but from everything I have heard and seen....it seems Valve is cooking. This has the shot to become really big.
Played a match last night and I didn't hate it, but I didn't really love it either - I think it's a bit more MOBA than I'd like, I would prefer a slightly smaller map and no soul collection/denial mechanic in exchange for some additional hero shooter elements like more basic attack archetypes (e.g rocket launcher, flamethrower, pickaxe).
Battleborne. I just want Battleborne back.
The movement kind of looks absolutely rancid to me, but I also genuinely despise all of the modern genre of "movement shooters" where you have a massive pile of free options that makes your character bounce and jitter all over the place and that's the obvious ideal playstyle in a firefight.
It's my main boomer video game take, I think every new button you add to make your character do some new movement option is directly detrimental, there's no need for anything beyond jump and crouch, the rest should be interactions between those buttons and game actions.
yeah what I'm most sad about is it seems like a continuation of the overwatch "press shift to rocket jump" formula, represents a dumbing down of movement mechanics compared to TF2 instead of building on it.
Definitely, also putting everything on cooldowns without any kind of shared resource is a dumbing down on top of that, in TF2 you'd for the most part have to spend both ammo and health on it(or directly swap out a damage dealing weapon), while in DOTA you'd have mana too to be concerned about.
I booted it up and got so put off by the cop vibes. All non-white characters are either some kind of racist caricature or just covering up their face as much as possible to not freak out g*mers with their DEI skin. Clicked around on a few characters to hear their voice lines to see if I can connect with any of them, and heard one of them say some shit like "resistance is futile" and was out after messing around a bit in the tutorial.
Since watching the PMG doc on Valve, I can't play off this kind of stuff anymore. I really recommend watching it — it's made by a couple of white men, so they play it down a bit (a lot), but it's fucking obvious how racist and sexist that place is from what they show.
Not like I'm the primary audience for this game anyway, but I thought I would try it to play with my friends, but it just brought up all the worst memories of when I used to play Dota 2.
Edit: forgot the moment when I got told by the tutorial to "kill neutrals to harvest their souls" or some shit. Fucking wild. (I know it's a Dota thing, but Dota is racist as shit too, it wouldn't be so popular with the worst type of shitstain g*mers if it wasn't)
I think this vibe is basically because the game used to be a half life game. It was originally intended to be set as a war between criminals and the Combine or something like that then got reskinned. Several character designs haven't changed at all since it was Citadel.
I don't know anything about that, so fair enough. At the end of the day I don't trust valve to create a multiplayer experience in which I would feel comfortable interacting with strangers. Not like that's any different from any other popular multiplayer game tho. Apex Legends might have been the best for that because of the handy ping system tbh
There is a very small amount of footage from the old Half Life version of the game here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g98eQx6WvbI&t=149s
It's fairly obvious why it has cop vibes so much when its roots are Rebels vs Fascists. What you're getting from the cop-ishness is the fact that those characters were originally intended to be on the fash side.
I agree with you on Valve's community cultivation. They cultivate communities that are indistinguishable from 4chan.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I guess that's very similar to the setup in CS - Amerikkkan invaders or rebels, pick your team. Except deadlock is much more character focused obv, so if you can pick whichever character for whichever team, then the fashiness just becomes their personality.
Idk which I prefer tbh lol. I'm picturing a Dota-like scenario where the opposite team's fash character on my lane is killing me over and over, and then a chud playing a fash character on my team is yelling slurs at me. And I'm stuck in the game for another 50 minutes. Not my idea of fun haha. I guess I am a little interested to see if any of the aspects of that specific experience aren't as bad in Deadlock, but not interested enough to find out.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
When the first leaks got out and I saw they literally just made one of the characters an old silver haired Native American archer guy I immediately assumed "oh this is their no effort early alpha placeholder before they make the real archer character, clearly" because I just assumed that at this point Valve clearly would have more creativity and basic cultural sensitivity to not just make their characters 100% lazy stereotypes.
They've managed to be behind Overwatch on this kind of shit, and that's despite Overwatch making the ability to climb walls a genetic trait of Japanese people.
Yeah it's so incredibly cringe. Not to mention the psychic damage you'd have to endure as a Turtle Island native unlucky enough to stumble upon this shit when you think you're about to have a fun time playing a video game.
I tried it but the character designs didn't really click with me, plus I got kinda bad framerates so I probably won't be playing it again at least until they start optimizing which I'm told is often pretty late in development.
I read that title as "Tied Dreadlock last night" and I'm like saying "wtf me too"
