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?

  • dinklesplein [any, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    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’

  • Eris235 [undecided]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    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.

  • Gorb [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    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

    • IvarK@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      3 months ago

      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

        • IvarK@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          3 months ago

          Games were a bit too much in terms of cognitive load imo, but it was not beyond saving by any measure

  • Comp4 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    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.

  • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    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.

  • Tommasi [she/her, pup/pup's]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    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.

  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    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.

    • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        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.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      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.

    • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      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.