just wanted to share my experience coming from a HotS player who played some DotA 2 but not any other MOBA. This isn’t “HotS BAD GAME” thread (Although I have issues with some heroes…).
So Deadlock is a MOBA made by Valve that has been an invite only for a while that was completely NDA, but after an article doing a galaxy brain move of not clicking “ok” (causing them to be banned for any Valve partnership) the game is no longer NDA.
So now its allowed to be shared on YT and streamed on Twitch or even discussed anywhere, despite being a friends only testing game with no way to download unless a friend of yours have the game and can friend invite someone.
But despite that already holding an average 60k player follow up daily for a game that isn’t released, in alpha state, and volatile development changes, so everything I am writing here can go from DotA 2 design to HotS design next year, so who knows.
Hero Rooster
Already a large hero pool of 22, with 6 coming soon placed on an experimental branch called “Hero Labs”, their designs are extremely unique with some established lore some very interesting others I don’t know lol. Eitherway I know Valve’s writing is pretty strong and can keep people attracted to story telling.
They are very diverse for an Alpha, from classic Valla AA that nukes an entire unorganized team, a robot hooking you from very far away and applying a bomb and then fires a death beam whenever he likes to, a time agent who can slow projectiles and spells that passes through her time wall and swap places with anyone, a genie guard(?) that can teleport as ultimate similar to Brightwing’s Phaseshift (without heals), there’s a lot of repeated designs that are familiar in MOBA, in general nothing inherently unique from a game play perspective but it helps them stand out and that’s perfectly ok.
Controls and Aim
I think it should be clear but unlike other MOBAs this is very aim heavy, the good positive side is that everyone’s bullets are giant bricks, its hard to miss but isn’t to a point where it would create a disadvantage between someone who aim better than someone else.
Has all the classic shooter mechanics, one thing I noticed is that this game lacks sprinting entirely and instead acts as a out of combat mechanic after around 3 seconds(?) where you enter a sprinting running state automatically with increased movement, so no more holding shift like an idiot for 30 minutes.
https://youtu.be/X01j-zS6tRY?t=171
This is also a source game, all its mechanics inherits the ancient game known as Quake all of which apply, so doing some strafing is possible and you can come up with some pretty powerful movement behaviors that allows you to get across the map pretty skillfully, something that surprisingly works in a MOBA environment.
All gun attacks are projectiles so no hit scanning at all, each bullet needs time to go from A to B, its rather quick but that tiny quarter of a second does make a difference if something will hit or miss, obviously its efficient from close range and will be instant but from far away it will be hard to hit but also deals no damage at all the damage drop off actually hits very hard which incentivizes to be close (at least 40 meters).
I already love the movement capabilities in this game, I think they are very well done and allows you to cover quite a lot from doing hilarious strats such as wall jumping, or creating acceleration to cover more gap by sliding and then jumping. Gives me Quake vibes, its great I love it.
Souls (Economy and XP)
Instead of gold and XP being separated they are instead merged together, acquire souls gives you increased leveling for quite minor stats in general advantage comes in the form of knowing which items to get and how to play the hero correctly but won’t make the game impossible, unless you are throwing hard, we are talking about a 30k soul difference. This is no different from have a 3 level disadvantage in HotS, if the enemy throw this moment by dying the losing team get a big soul margin as a recovery for such kills.
“”“Last”“” Hitting
Souls are shared with every nearby ally, when one ally last hit a soul orb or kill creeps it will be given to everyone who participated in that kill, hero kills are global though. I like this because it doesn’t inherently force players to fall behind dramatically there’s going to be clear outliers like the carry but its minor.
It’s important to note that souls are granted when killing a minion and after a while because they also fly away souls that needs to be confirmed, this is the last hitting part where people can deny souls from others similar to you denying their souls.
Ammo and Mana
Guns have a limited magazine size and reload of roughly 3 seconds to incentivize you to make the most out of it.
There’s no mana, all heroes start with some exceptionally long cooldowns that get reduced by upgrading the perspective ability (if provides such upgrade) or buying items like Improved Cooldowns/Superior Cooldowns.
4 Lanes, Team of 6
Map is big, quite big actually, takes a while to go from your core to the enemy core, I like the Ridable Ziplines that can allow you to go to where the lane is currently pushed, with 3x the speed and 6x as an active. Currently where it stands the map is designed that the outer lanes are the solo lanes so only 1v1 heroes happen on top of being big and wider, while middle lanes have 2v2 happening, tend to be tighter and shorter in the middle.
Items
I was very skeptical about this tbh but I think they grew on me because the items actually tells a very basic and straightforward what exactly they do especially from the title, it took me a while to read and learn them but at some point I was able to blindly pick and even ignore pre-established builds I created for myself.
Although it removes the flavors of item names it gets the point across very quickly for newcomers, this allows for improved readability than reading “Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker” not unknowing what it really does.
Items are separated into 3 categories, Weapon, Vitality and Spirit. Each item gives a flat bonus increase on top of the items main modification, for example Improved Burst increases the damage of your spell if it deals more than 80 damage but also provide minor stat bonuses such as Spirit Shield and Weapon damage. Avoiding a lot of one dimensional builds where you lack in gun damage but a lot in Spirit and vice versa, sure the damage is coming the most from your Spirit but you won’t be falling behind in sustain and damage, just slightly LESS buffed. This similarly applies to other items from other category.
Shield vs Armor
I like this mechanic, there’s Weapon Shield and Spirit Shield which protects you from that damage type but doesn’t scale with armor reduction, ergo if you have 99% damage reduction to spirit you will still take the full damage to the shield, allowing for some interesting early game design choices for both micro play and macro play.
Objective(s)
Lackluster, if not arguably not something as a shining example from HotS, not a “get 3 stacks to disable all towers” type of objectives, just a simple Urn delivery giving you a burst of souls in the process and ability point (which is pretty big because you basically skip an entire level). It is very difficult because the carrier is silenced and disarmed so they really don’t do anything except melee-ing requiring the team to protect them to complete the delivery, it also has advantage mechanic where the delivery point is changed to the losing team side, similar to point B/C in Hanamura Temple.
Mid Boss has it all though, you have a big boss that when attacked shouts in announcement that someone is doing the boss and when killed you get some souls but a crystal will drop that requires you to melee charge it to acquire there’s all the bonus denying in this and I think its the closest it will have a big strong and powerful objective, it cuts respawn timers by half gives you +200 HP and minions/creeps are empowered for couple of minutes.
Overall
I love this game, I think its been one of my favorites for a while now, there’s quite the complexity when entered it with a HotS mindset thinking I will have it easy I was wrong, it brings a refreshing and new design that aren’t seen in other games and still maintain being unique. Valve really cooked well in making yet another challenging shooter where they simplified a lot of frustrating designs while still bringing something new to the table.
