Thoughts on Deadlock.
There are also slot machines you punch to take damage in exchange for cash. As one did in 1930s New York City.
Deadlock is a new multiplayer online battle arena game by Valve, with 21 characters (currently) that play in a six-against-six match of a third-person shooter mixed with DOTA 2.
The learning curve is there. Playing my first matches against bots, even after the tutorials, I didn’t really know what to expect or how to proceed. There’s a good number of items to buy, and you don’t really know how they interact or what’s what. That’s on top of the 21 characters, each of which has four unique abilities. Add in soul farming, last hits, denial of soul orbs. Plus there’s the complex map of four lanes with 18 towers or mini-bosses per team. And then a two-phase final boss. The map is loaded with “jungle” camps with other neutral enemies, the mid-boss, the soul urn, secret shops, Buddha statues, teleporters, ropes, jump pads. It’s a lot.
I’ve played a single humans-against-humans match and watched a handful of them of various skill levels. I’ve learned to lean on planned builds rather than search (or blindly click on) the periodic table of upgrades. I dabble in denying souls and hanging back during the early phase to try only to get last-hits. It’s still a pretty strange game for someone used to Team Fortress 2.
Farming.
One of the things I never liked about DOTA 2 was the farming aspect. I don’t mind it as much here, but I still don’t like the fact it’s such a numbers game in that respect. By design, farming is accomplishes a few things:
- Starts the players accumulating cash and upgrading.
- Puts players in proximity and in conflict.
- Gives an objective, building momentum.
It’s a smart design, but what I find sour is more that you’re in this race to build, zero-to-sixty, Latin mottos dripping from your lips as you charge in to… float around in the background until your pawns ding their pawns enough to get the last blow, to click on the floaty soul orbs to grab yours or deny theirs. It feels so meaningless. It doesn’t feel like the jump ball or face-off in other sports. It feels a lot more calculating and passive.
Art and User Interface.
From what I’ve read, the art is not yet final. While it went through a few other iterations, it currently features a 1930s prohibition-and-noir feel, though some-to-much of the art is apparently still placeholder or from earlier versions.
I’m looking forward to seeing how the art evolves. I’m hoping the lean into the period much more. New York in the 1930s was full of fire escapes, stairstepped mid-rise buildings, street carts, and hand-painted signs. Laundry hanging between buildings. Fireplugs. Above all, it had grit, where the current world feels too clean. That’s one of the places they could draw on TF2‘s design, as the maps there certainly feel more lived-in.
I’d also like to see iteration of the neutral enemies, adopting models that seem like they better fit in the 1930s world. That last one is a minor sore spot, as they feel like generic monsters rather than something that points the the period and world. I’m not sure what 1930s monsters look like (maybe throw black fedoras on them?), but the ones they have certainly don’t make me think what would cause a kid in the 1930s who’d screened a creature feature to tiptoe past the dark alleyway next to the soon-to-be-demolished Criterion theater.
From a user-interface standpoint, I hope they will give more obvious non-text cues for things like the radius you can attack a tower from, or the state of the lane and map in general. I tend to move forward not realizing my lane isn’t pushed up, and in early games I tended to try to attack towers from beyond the effective range.
You can get a good overview of many things looking at the mini-map, but it feels like they could be better reflected in the city environment itself, whether that means some partly-destroyed environments or what, that’s up to the designers.
Game Progression.
This is a game about acquiring powers in order to dominate the opponent. You grind early, level up, and use the gained power to turn around and do it some more until you either don’t measure up and lose or until you defeat the other team. A little of that character improvement is decided for you (though you can choose the order that your spirit powers level up), and most of it is in the shop system.
A big positive is how detailed the shop is, and the UI for builds (pre-set lists of items) is nice (if improvable). As you gain cash, you get to go spend it and make your play easier and your character more powerful.
You’re on the corporate ladder, trying to pull a hostile takeover of the other guy before he can turn the tables on you. For my taste it’s a little much, going both ways. If my build is good enough, or I did better in the early game to get built before they could, the hope is it’ll snowball and I’ll dominate, but that’s not as fun to me as a match of TF2 where a sudden breakthrough can happen and the whole match changes.
In other words, it feels like game skill gets replaced with farming skill to some extent, so that by late-game, or even mid-game, the winner is decided more by their cash than their game sense or ability.
Headshots.
Every character has a firearm, and every one of them can land headshots. You should always aim for the head in this game. This is another aspect I don’t particularly like even if it’s good design. It is a certain skill to pull off headshots, but it’s also a bit tiresome after a while. In TF2 I rarely think about heads (other than to admire someone’s hat) as I don’t play Sniper (or Ambassador Spy). I can do okay at headshots in Deadlock, but the constant need to focus on it isn’t as fun for me.
There are also some minor design issues here with the towers. Most of the towers it’s clear where the head is, but I haven’t learned if the walkers have a head to shoot, nor for McGinnis’ turrets.
Closing Thoughts.
I’m going to keep giving Deadlock a chance. While I don’t currently see it as something I’d play regularly over the long-term, it is an interesting design. I expect it to remain a popular game, and it will hit for a lot of people. So far, the most fun I’ve had is tinkering with custom builds and then testing them against bots. As a long-time TF2 player, I still prefer its casual fun and its older design, despite its flaws.
Deadlock is well-designed, but I think it’s in a direction I’m not that fond of. It’s focused on ruthlessness, efficiency, trying to attain some ephemeral perfection by trying very hard. I can see the value in that, but my primary goal in gaming is fun, not accomplishment.