Lessons from Deadlock

General Discussion
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THIS ISN’T A DEADLOCK VS OVERWATCH POST.

Deadlock/Valve isn’t perfect, and a different genre than OW, but I think it has some lessons OW could learn from it - much like how OW took pings from Apex.

And yes I know none of this will ever be implemented because Blizz, it’s just a subject I’m interested in and I’m avoiding work.

  1. OW needs a minimap

-one of the biggest frustrations on OW is grouping/general lack of awareness of what’s going on from teammates. I think we can all agree voice comms are dead, and text comms/pings not good enough. You have to give the PLAYER the ability to get this information somehow. This would massively increase grouping, proper retreating, etc.

What exactly is shown on the minimap (enemies?) is debatable, but one being a + to the game is unquestionable imo.

  1. OW2 going for simplicity was a HUGE mistake that made their job harder and made hard counters guaranteed

-Deadlock locks abilities at the start and has a bunch of (moba stuff you can purchase). by it being a slow build-out throughout the game (like I assume most MOBAs) each character can have many different variations, but they start out the same at the beginning of the game (+ one choosable ability). This obviously wouldn’t really work with OW given the game modes and it not being a MOBA, but I think there are ideas to discuss in this area.

Blizz locked themselves into balancing nightmares because they only have a few ways of controlling the pace of the match. Timers, hero swapping, map design, and…? I’m not saying we should unlock abilities or items or have npcs (again not a MOBA), just that having ‘more’ there to the gameplay of a match gives them MORE CONTROL over game pacing/snowballing/countering etc. and allows them to create dynamic matches that evolve as they play. Payload is the most popular mode for a reason - it controls pacing much better than cps.

HOWEVER. They have seemingly realized this with the ‘choose your passive’ idea and 6v6 potentially returning. But THATS NOT ENOUGH. There needs to be decisions you make while actually playing the game.

  1. Stomps really just straight up ruin your game

With ~150hrs of Deadlock - pretty much every day since I got my invite - I’m taking a break now, because a recent update made the game crazy stompy and frustrating…much like a certain game I know.

All the sudden I was cursing, and altf4ing after a match was over, which had never happened previously. It’s crazy how I went from loving the game to barely interested in it. But unlike OW I have confidence they’ll correct this relatively quickly.

  1. OW needs a proper grapple char

-This is just for me personally. Giving Cass a rope has been a popular suggestion for all of OW…

  1. Feel free to post your own or debate.
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Your mentioning a minimap reminded me of another UI update the OW devs were thinking of adding: the party status panel that’s already around in other modes, such as PvE and replays. Being able to easily keep track of everyone’s HP, ult, etc. without filling the screen with a dirty big scoreboard is something that should have been included since day one.

Has there been any word on whether it’s still even coming?

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I vaguely remember hearing about it ages ago but not anytime recently. But yeah this is another thing that would add awareness!

I think in general Blizz are really hesitant in adding anything to the screen since they add so many effects to the characters? But they could obviously give you the ability to turn them off…

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I think they might have mentioned that before, but here’s the thing: in order to check up on my teammates’ ultimate status, I have to bring up the scoreboard which completely fills my screen. I’d much rather have the PvE panel up there, with on/toggle/off setting in options instead. It’s never been an issue in PvE modes so I doubt I’d suddenly have problems in PvP modes.

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Being able to look at your screen and go ‘oh that’s why that happened’ instead of being confused about it is important imo. In OW you almost have to go watch replays if the deathcam doesn’t make it clear. The number of times you die and go ‘wait where were my healer’s’ or something…

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I’m playing the game with no hud for more immersion you are all suggesting more visual noise.

Watch this it’s really short stomp cause i didn’t even realise enemy had only three people at start.

It really helps with focus and makes you not dependent on dopamine markers.

Now this is how the match would have looked if I had hud on, see the difference in dopamine reward.

The only disadvantage is i absolutely forget to use ult all the time.
Abilities I can track as it’s hanzo it’s easy.

Obviously won’t work well for ability dependent heroes could go for just no crosshair plays for them.

Here is another

These are just my early testing I’m getting better at it :laughing: have more good matches I will later make one about the benefits of this.

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Immersion is definitely important. It’s a big reason why I’m better when voice comms are minimal and why I prefer FPS to TPS. Not everyone is the same though.

Personally my ideal implementation would be to have a button that pulls up the info, rather than have it displayed be default (or you can turn them on to always show if you prefer it that way).

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Different strokes for different folks. If you like having a minimalist UI that’s fine, but I don’t. I like having an interface that tells me what I want to know with the minimum of fuss.

As long as it’s all optional, I don’t see the harm. For example, I would never play with the HP bars or kill feed off, but if people want to opt into that then go for it. But don’t impose that on me. I’m certainly not accepting any guff from Blizzard about what makes for a good UI, given that I have to do the bleedin’ Konami code to get out of the end game screen(s) and back to options if I want to tweak something.

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The main difference is you notice all this visually and not pressing tab actually makes you a lot less likely to tilt.
Obviously different strokes and this is something I’m just experimenting but it’s definitely very promising.

You actually are more aware than with all the assists.

Obviously won’t work for all heroes but it’s really nice the amount of detail that’s convinced through the game through just gameplay.

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It really doesn’t. Could it be useful - sure, but is not essential for the gameplay loop.

Even Paladins realized hard counters are bad early on and steered away from hard counters.

Simplicity is what made OW stand out and what actually made it successful but since OW2, they keep adding skill bloat to new heroes and making them harder to read.

yeah, no thanks. High mobility is cancer for this game.

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Overwatch team wasn’t involved with these from various testimonies as well as people talking about it they were protected by Jeff.

I don’t think they deserve such labels when they are probably one of the few units who were good

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Artistically, Deadlock looks awful though. Floating numbers everywhere, bugged animations, and visually bland. Depressing.

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I wish you could see how many people put you on avoid

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almost like it’s a development build huh, weird

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Seems like you could learn a lot too considering the Overwatch devs were never part of the “harassing women” lawsuit lol

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4 endorsements see that mercy pocketing me they are not duoed or grouped with me.

Second match see I come in and take out the pharah for my team and cleaning kiriko.
I do my duty.

I practice it a lot before I do these shenanigans in even qp.

Like I can’t do the long range rollout shots etc and not so great against cqc strafe but overall I’m still the top dps in the match.

I just need to practice ult tracking, i literally forget about it without hud :sob:

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I think the main thing is the countering. Being a MOBA and having ~20 less characters than OW, Deadlock has yet to show me a character that hard-counters another. It can be because of the items, as in, if your character is weak to CC, you can get an item that mitigates CC, if your character has trouble dealing with flying people, you can get an item that knocks them down. But that’s not the only thing.
I feel like the kits in Deadlock are way more versatile. Characters can excel in close combat, for instance, but they are not locked on that niche. Everybody gets a gun, even if every gun is different from each other. Every character has the same stamina based movement (dash, double jump, dash jump, slide, wall jumps), and many characters have their own movement abilities (shout out to Lash that can use teammates and enemies to launch himself into the air). Oh, and the skillset you develop for this base movement carries on into other characters. Also, every character has two meelee attacks (one charged, one quick) and a parry. Timing the parry against a meelee stuns the enemy and leaves them vulnerable. Every character has this, so every character has a chance in close-quarters as well. Even if everyone has access to ranged attacks, close quarters combat and movement, some characters still specialize into such niches, and that’s what grants variety to the gameplay.
What I take from this is that OW would benefit from more versatile characters. Having some sort of universal momentum based movement (dashes and dash jumps for instance) would make the game feel so much better and would add a new layer of skill to it. Having characters being able to perform in various situations while also specializing in specific ones would also mitigate a lot of the hard countering going on.

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You could have massive arrows that pointed to every character on the map at all times and people still wouldn’t know where people are.

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Pretty sure the artistic look stays the same til release. Why did they choose this when we live in a gooner era of the internet? To what kind of players is Valve trying to cater to and sell their skins? Believe it or not but gameplay only is not the sole reason people play games anymore.

Counter-Strike is not a comparison because that game is a multiple decade old title. Many people love classics, and are fans of militarized shooters.

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they pray for a citation that’ll never come

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