this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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It's still very much a MOBA. If you were hoping for parts of that that are boring to be more exciting, they're not. If you were hoping for parts that were difficult to learn to be easier to learn, they're not. I personally have a hard time believing that, long-term, this will appeal to anyone that Dota doesn't already appeal to.
I disagree. The perception of how the game is set up changes the more you play. At first you think it's 75% MOBA and 25% shooter - mostly a MOBA. But the more you play the more you realise that that 25% shooter part is disproportionately important.
Deadlock adds an entire layer of complexity and skill on top of the MOBA: three-dimensional movement, mouse control, crosshair placement... The amount of movement tech alone is wild, and will be insanely important for high calibre play. It will appeal to an entirely different type of player.
If you say so. When I played it, it was still the laning phase for arguably too long and last hits to get anything done. It was still a fairly complicated item shop and an extensive list of characters that I need to understand before I get into a match in order to make any worthwhile decisions. It's basically guaranteed that the list of items and characters will get longer as time goes on, which only makes it more daunting to jump into and try to catch up with. As someone who bounced off of MOBAs for a lot of these reasons, it's not solving any problems for me. And the shooting component of it feels fine, but I'll go back and play an actual shooter where it feels better.
I mean, yes. It's a MOBA by Icefrog - it's going to have complexity. Deadlock isn't trying to appeal to players who are tangentially interested in MOBAs but find them daunting and complex. They are gunning for players who find the top-down view boring and slow and want the fluid, fast-paced action of a movement based shooter. It's essentially combining the high skill ceiling of two genres that already each has incredibly high skill ceilings - and that alone I think is going to appeal to a lot of people.
It felt to me like they were just making another MOBA that's going to appeal to people who already play MOBAs, and I'm not sure how many people were dying to get into a MOBA but just couldn't get into the top-down view or scratch that itch by playing Smite, but I guess we'll find out soon enough when this game is out of early access by comparing player counts across this and Dota 2.
As someone with thousands of hours across Dota 1&2 I will say the moment to moment gameplay in Deadlock is completely different. It scratches a TF2-type itch, in addition to MOBA gameplay. I think what you're right about is that the target audience might be smaller, in that you need to be good at both MOBAs and shooters to be good at this game. But from what I've seen of the big streamers adopting it, learning the MOBA parts to a point of "good enough" won't take that long.
In fact, counterintuitively I think it's the MOBA playes migrating over who will struggle. Aim and movement is extremely crucial, and if you can't aim you will suck at Deadlock regardless of how many Dota tourneys you've won.
I was definitely not getting a TF2-type itch scratched, but I can only speak for myself.
I don't think it's people that can't get into MOBAs, it's people that enjoy good movement and shooting mechanics, while also enjoying MOBA mechanics, which a lot of people fall into. I can also say for certain that SMITE will not scratch the itch of people who want good movement and shooting similar to a traditional shooter.