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Review of Deadlock (DRAFT)

Why I like Deadlock:

  1. More accessible (than most MOBAs).
  2. Movement feels fluid and fun.
  3. Faster laning phase (than most MOBAs).
  4. Still keeps many elements of a MOBA.

What I dislike about Deadlock:

  1. CC abilities and items are too strong, especially slows. 2. Tanks feel pretty weak outside of specific situations.

My Qualifications

I've played the following games extensively:

  1. SMITE
  2. League of Legends
  3. Overwatch
  4. Team Fortress 2
  5. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

I've played the following games a bit:

  1. DOTA 2
  2. Valorant

I am shit at all of them. I have no qualifications.

Accessibility and New Players

Overall, MOBAs have a pretty bad track record of onboarding new players. This makes some sense, as MOBAs are inherently very complicated and (most) of them are focused on competitive gameplay, not casual newbies. Even considering the complexity of MOBAs, the most popular ones have a truly terrible onboarding experience.

LoL is possibly one of the least accessible games of all time. The LoL tutorial might actually be one of the worst video game tutorials I have ever played, as it puts you in situations that you literally cannot see in the real game. DOTA 2 has a tutorial, but it really teaches you the absolute basics; I played DOTA for all of two hours and just simply couldn't get into it. It felt like uglier LoL to me and I had no idea what was going on.

SMITE is the "easiest" MOBA but still contains an absolute schmorgasboard of terminology, tactics, UI elements, buttons, and combos.

Deadlock stands in a really stark contrast. The tutorial is good, but not fantastic. It does a good job of teaching core gameplay mechanics, but not terminology or tactics. I think the UI and gameplay of Deadlock, however, do a much better job of onboarding players to the game than any other MOBA, for the following reasons.

Souls and Farming

SMITE, LoL, and DOTA all have gold and XP as separate concepts. This does add depth to the game, specifically in duo lanes with a support needs XP but not as much gold and carry who needs both but needs gold much more, as carry items are more expensive. Deadlock instead has one form of resource, which is souls. Earning souls allows you to buy items at shop, but it also fills a meter which levels up the abilities of your character.

Considering that it can take new players literally hundreds of hours in any of the other MOBAs to really understand the intricacies of XP and gold, I think this was a good choice.

SMITE "solves" this problem by removing last hits. If you're in range of something that gives gold and XP and you did damage, you get the gold and XP. However, this removes a hugely important expression of skill. Properly last-hitting is such an important and iconic mechanic in LoL and DOTA that the removal of last hits makes SMITE feel less "MOBA" than other MOBAs.

I love the way Deadlock handles last hitting. In Deadlock, you need to hit the killing blow on a creep to get the souls. After you do so, however, a green orb will float from their body containing approximately half the value of the creep. Shooting this orb grants you the souls immediately. If it floats away, you are granted the souls after a short delay. However, if the enemy shoots that orb, they earn the value of the souls in that orb.

This is an ingenious mechanic for several reasons, but the one relevant to this section is that:

  1. When a creep is about to die, there's a clear visual indicator (they start moving differently), signaling to the player that they should attack. 1. Successfully last-hitting a creep has a clear visual indicator (the brightly
colored orb is released). 2. Successfully popping an orb has a clear audio and visual indicator. 3. Having your orb denied (when the enemy shoots it) gives a loud and abrasive audio indicator that something bad happened.

Overall, because of these audio cues, players learn extremely quickly that they are supposed to kill the minions a certain way. This incredibly important concept is communicated to new players through movement, sound, and color, and I think the way this was done is really effective!

Speaking of visual and audio indicators, this leads us to...

UI/UX and Cues

Many of the UI cues in Deadlock come with clear text. If you get disarmed, which temporarily disables your ability to shoot, a symbol will pop up visibly beside your cursor with a crossed-out gun, along with the text DISARMED. If you try to shoot an objective from too far away, the text TOO FAR AWAY will appear. If you dash and miss your dash timing, the text MISSED DASH TIMING will appear at the bottom of the screen, along with a highlight in your stamina bar. And so on...

Deadlock doesn't always use text and icons, but when it does this gives both a clear indicator to new players who can pause and read it, as well as a distinctive visual alert for more advanced players who may be focused on other things.

Text effects are also present in LoL and DOTA, but I feel it is used less effectively. The visual indicators are more clear and consistent, and the text is more helpful, often indicating to the players what they are supposed to do about the situation.

Sounds aren't just used with minions. Every single weapon in the game has a unique audio cue telling you when it's about to run out of ammo and you will need to reload. Most abilities have very unique audio cues, making it easy to tell when something is activated or going on cooldown. Footsteps are very loud, making it harder to sneak up on someone with them being completely unaware, as they can't pan their camera behind them.

Literal Instructions in the Game

Audio cues are also used for another interesting thing - teaching you about the characters, lore, and the game.

Every MOBA has voice lines, and those voice lines give the player a feeling for what that character is "about" - their personality, whether they're good or evil, whether they're spunky or depressed or serious or motivated or whatever. This is all well and good, but it doesn't help you play the game.

In Deadlock, the character voice lines literally teach you how to play the game. When you first level Paradox's 2nd skill, Time Wall, she literally says "I should swap someone through this!" The first time I played her, I didn't realize how this ability worked, as the only obvious effect is has is to block bullets. After hearing this voice line I took some time to read the descriptions of her skills more closely, and realized one of her most important combos is combining her Time Wall with her ult, Paradoxical Swap, as passing through Time Wall does percent Spirit damage!

Another great example is Seven's ultimate, Storm Cloud. This ability is a pub stomper for sure, as it does massive damage in a huge area and has a long duration. One way Valve has tried to mitigate this is a plethora of voice lines in which friendly characters say things such as "Get away from Seven!" or "Get behind cover!" when his ultimate is activated. This is a great way to help brand-new players deal with an oppressive ability without necessarily making it easy for them to counter.

Movement

Movement in Deadlock is very dynamic and contributes heavily to making the game feel fast-paced and fun. All characters are able to dash in any direction, including in the air. All characters can double-jump and mantle over decently sized-walls. All 'melee' characters have a dash or jump ability which allows them to close gaps, the exception being Bebop - he has a hook which closes gaps by pulling the enemy towards him. Finally, all characters can crouch, slide, crouch-jump, or buy any of the multitude of movement items in the game.

Movement items in Deadlock are very, very powerful, and very forgiving. The Combat Blink, which teleports the player a short distance, active in SMITE has a 180s cooldown. Flash in LoL has a 300 second cooldown.(I honestly don't know what the DOTA equivalent is, but it likely has one.) The Deadlock equivalent, Warp Stone, has a sixteen second cooldown.

Like DOTA and unlike SMITE/LoL, there is no Recall spell in Deadlock to send the player back to base. There are, however, ziplines. The ziplines, which allow players to quickly go to lanes or even just jump in the air, are a great mechanic for making movement between the large map feel snappy. The Deadlock equivalent of SMITE's Teleport Rune or LoL's Teleport summoner spell is the Zipline Boost, which makes the character ride ziplines faster. Boost is available to all characters for free, with a sizeable cooldown, which makes returning to lane after a really bad play not feel like the end of the world.

The result of combining these elements is that Deadlock heroes absolutely fly around the map. Movement is extremely fast and gaps can get closed instantly. Hitting abilities and headshots takes skill, because opponents can dodge even large AoE abilities with the right outplay. The varied map terrain lets fast and skilled players utilize movement and line of sight to win or escape fights.

Overall, good movement can do anything from helping a bad player survive a rough lane to making a good player feel like an unstoppable monster. Good movement is a core skill in Deadlock with a low skill floor and a very, very high skill ceiling.

Fast Laning Phase

We already talked about two mechanics, ziplines and movement, that make Deadlock feel fast. There are a few other key points which lend themselves to fast-paced and engaging gameplay.

The first is the availability of shops in-lane, and the fact that early-game items are quite cheap. This allows players to buy items early and to be extremely flexible in their itemization. If you are getting absolutely stomped, you can buy a quick healing item and stay healthy enough to keep farming.

(As a bonus, shops are placed behind towers, meaning that even players who are getting pushed hard in a losing lane still have a chance to win through items. They can buy items and get a power spike, while their opponent has to temporarily let off pressure in order to quickly dash back to their shop.)

The second is healing minions, which add a little extra health boost to both sides, keeping them in the fight.

The third is the relatively high passive HP regeneration available to all heroes. Simply playing safe for a few minutes will keep you (mostly) alive and allow you to keep farming and trading.

The fourth is the long reload time and relatively small magazine size. Effective trading needs to be a combination of using your abilities and your gun. Simply spraying bullets or running at the enemy means you will have to stop shooting and reload. Trades and poke can still be deadly and effective, but all-ins are much harder, meaning early kills happen less frequently in lower MMR matches.(Items later in the game can increase your magazine size and decrease your reload time and are a core component of many builds, but they are too expensive to allow for early-game poke spam.)

The fifth is that towers and minions do MASSIVE damage early (we will revisit this concept later), so dives are still possible but much more difficult, even for tanky characters.

Overall, this means players (who aren't getting completely outplayed) spend significantly less time in grey screen or walking back to lane. This means they spend more time doing things that are actually fun: farming, trading, jungling, or even ganking.

Feels like a MOBA

It would be very easy to just make Deadlock feel like Overwatch 3 or Valorant 2, as they share many elements. However it does really feel (at least to me) more similar to games like LoL or DOTA, even more so than SMITE. The core reasons for these have already been mentioned: high creep and tower damage, low magazine size, long reload time. You cannot just spam fire in Deadlock. Well, you can, but that means you are either A) playing McGuiness or B) you are losing in farm and probably health.

At minute 1, most characters cannot kill a creep with a full magazine. If you simply sink bullets into the creep, you will be stuck waiting for your reload while your creep wave last-hits the creep and you lose farm. Even if you save your magazine until the creep is half-health, you are likely going to have your orb shot by the enemy or risk missing another creep.

Thus bullets early-game are a limited resource; you need to carefully use line-of-sight and precise attacks to effectively farm. Much like LoL!

This is in sharp contrast to SMITE where autos and skills get spammed relentlessly, and there's no real skill to attacking the wave itself - you need to focus more on positioning to poke your enemy laner.

Another thing that makes Deadlock feel more like a MOBA than a hero shooter like Overwatch is the itemization and snowballing. Characters in LoL and DOTA snowball hard, and SMITE has some snowballing, but it's less aggresive. The scaling curves on Deadlock characters makes the game feel much closer to LoL or DOTA than SMITE.

Dislikes

Crowd Control

Since movement is so vitally important to Deadlock, CC abilities and items are inherently strong.

My biggest complaint about CC is Bullet Slow. It's strange to me because few people would consider a 'slowing' of movement worse than a 'stopping' of movement but it clearly is in Deadlock. Certain characters (ahem, McGuiness) can proc Bullet Slow nearly instantly and almost entirely lock down an enemy hero with little effort, they just have to hit a peppering of shots on any part from any range. It has no cooldown (other than reload time) and pairs well with the main damage source for the characters who build it. Bullet Slow is incredibly oppressive and unfun, it removes lots of the enemy's ability to outplay the fight and forces them to specifically itemize around it, I think even moreso than hard CC abilities.

Tanking

'Melee' characters like Abrams, Ivy, M&K, Bebop, Yamato, Lash, and Shiv are clearly more difficult to play in a game where everyone has guns. This is evident by the fact that none of those characters are marked as "Good for new players" in the character select screen.

However I would argue that Bebop, Yamato, Lash, Shiv, and even M&K are not tanks, despite the fact that they have CC, bigger health pools, and are supposed to get up and close to the enemy. All these characters benefit greatly from building high Spirit damage and ducking in-and-out of the fight in a playstyle more reminiscient of an assassin archetype. Ivy can be tanky, but is clearly archetyped as a support character or a solo laner, and her solo builds rely much more on weapon damage than spirit damage.

Abrams and M&K are the only characters (in my opinion) who can be built as 'true' tanks, with viable builds that are primarily just health items. But building both these characters this way doesn't feel very fun. There is so much damage and CC in Deadlock that pure-tank builds have a sweet spot mid-game where they can actually tank damage, and then after that it's chain CC into focus-fire into grey screen. You have to be really really good and get insanely fed, or have an extremely coordinated team. And if Valve learned anything from TF2, it's that playstyles which rely exclusively on your team to be effective are not nearly as fun.