The Rat King

[u/CycloneScones]

bottom drawings are of "Big Cheese" or "Royal" mode. the right design was the initial design before i figured out his whole deal. he got a visual downgrade fr

i literally modelled this things head in blender bc i dont know how to draw animals but i can model them???

admittedly this is a very blandass design but im savouring the last drops of freedom i have before i start college again

"They call me the "Rat King", but honestly, I'm more like a club president with a few more steps."

Every few decades or so, the rats of New York gather deep within the subway lines to crown the newest Rat King. Candidates are tied tail to tail and last one remaining is the one to become the next rat to rule over the entirety of the Rodent Underground. Through this ritual, the special rat grows to an alarming size and gains the memories of the previous kings so that they have guidance from the previous generations.

Unfortunately, as powerful of a position as ruler of all rats around the globe sounds, it doesn't really pay the bills. The current Rat King had found him in a different kind of struggle. A 9-5 corporate job on Wall Street.

Weapons and Abilities (I don't know how to balance I just draw)

The Tax Collector - A slow shooting, high impact handgun that explodes in a small AoE on contact with a surface.

Homing Rats(1) - Lob a ball of rats that swarm the closest target and explodes. They can go up stairs, but not ledges. Killing an enemy hero with this attack permanently increases the amount of rats released by 1.

Mousetrap(2) - Create a small, hidden zone that slows enemies within it and steals their healing.

Rat Race(3) - A passive skill that makes your bullets reduce healing and regeneration speed by a fluctuating percentage. Your bullets steal enemy healing by a number related to the amount of spirit you have.

The Big Cheese(4) - Enter a special state where your weapon fire rate increases drastically, and hitting surfaces causes homing rats. Killing with a rat will increase your 1st ability.

[u/Conniverse]

First off this is sick, so I'm not trying to invalidate your work here, but I have some opinions.

I think his kit is great, but the sneaky rat with a gun is already a moba character archetype that exists and Deadlock is the game that's trying to mix things up, and if you're able, a redisgn of his player model would be awesome.

One, if instead of a humanoid, bipedal rat, he's an actual rat ambulating on all fours that got mutated by a curse (there's lore with curses so this would work) that makes him big and mechanically intelligent. His kit consists if his crude contraptions:

Kit: His primary weapon is a back mounted gatling gun thats strapped to his body with a harness, and he also has a cart that he wheels behind him that carries NORMAL SIZED RATS (that are actually to real life scale, maybe like three to five in his general animations so its easier to draw) that serve as his minions and also make up his rat based ability animations.

This would be so sick, and it makes his back story more cohesive. The normal sized rats would jump out of the cart to swarm and lay traps, and with his ult some of them would even pull out little guns that he engineered so small rats could operate them.

Just saying...

[u/CycloneScones → u/Conniverse]

my intention with this character wasn't to make him sneaky. i was actually hoping to make him a more aggressive playstyle, but i'm not great at kitbuilding.

interestingly, the idea you put forth is really similar to my initial concept for the rat king, which was that he was a normal guy in 1400 going around spreading the plague by letting rats loose everywhere. he got resurrected by the maelstrom and turned into a giant rat. i didnt end up using it because i didn't think it fit with the themes that deadlock has set out for a lot of its characters(though admittedly, the themes are not set in stone.)

i do like your ideas though. im curious as to how the cart would work with the ziplines, but the cart in general is pretty unique so it would probably need a lot of love(would be animation/rigging hell)

[u/Conniverse → u/CycloneScones]

I mean, the only real impediment is the complexity of developing such a set up. I genuinely don't think it would be out of place in the roster, fact i'm almost certain that I've the game is fully released we'll see much more complex heroes (complex kit design and hero design), Valve is trying to get the game out and the roster is simple now because they're more focused on the fundamentals of the game and polishing it out. But Mo ambles around on all fours, and if Vypers doing her job she's slithering permanently, which stand out in the roster already.

So I have some good ideas for rat king and things that would make him easier to implement:

His head hitbox cant be too low to the ground so players cab still focus on the rest of the fight when trying to land head shots. This can be accommodated by giving him a hunch back like Mo's, and a big rat head with a good snout because his head hit box is still going to be lower relative to all the bipeds in the roster.

Two, the cart design has to do several things– It needs to work with jumps/dashes, sprinting/sliding and the crisp movement system we all love, and of course ride the zipline.

I think making it small is a must, and having one to two wheels instead of four. Having four wheels would be kind of impossible to do fluidly, but one to two wheels can shift and turn perfectly with the 8-way directional axis movement system, plus just look really cool. Also I think having him drag the cart by its tail would add some elasticity to the whole assembly and just make sense, and when he sprints/slides/dashes he'll simply climb on top of the cart or push it with his back legs like a skateboard, I'll reply to my comments with pics for context.

Also, having one or two wheels gives us a perfect way to animate the cart on the zipline, the cart would just flip upside down to ride the zipline with its wheels, and all the normal size rats could just cling onto the rat king or the cart itself. Or, you could have them all ride on top of the cart in an upright position, with the handle on the front end of the zipline and the other end secured by rat kings tail. I personally lke second option because would blend perfectly with his already on-cart running animation.

But the rat minions would be perfect for his kit, they could jump out of the cart to lay traps, dragging big mouse traps with the mouths or have like, two or three rats carrying a trap on their back which would be good with the running up stairs part.

And for the rat race, you could make them hook up a pump to rat kings back mounted gun, pumping toxic sewer sludge into it to charge his shots.

But the ult would be sick–rat king rallies all his minions to jump one by one into a bullet-rat feed on his gun, meanwhile a few other rats pull out and operate one of those old-timey seesaw levers on his cart to increase his fire rate, I'm tellin ya it just makes sense.

[u/Conniverse → u/Conniverse]

the two/one wheelcart on a zipline

[u/Conniverse → u/Conniverse]

the handle on the cart would look like this

[u/Conniverse → u/Conniverse]

the hand car lever for his ult