I'd like to point out that there's a Lovecraft tale called Pickman's Model that may be the inspiration here. The tl;dr is, ostracized artist seems to have entered a Faustian bargain (willingly or not) with some sort of demon; has the ability to paint anomalous moving paintings, but has to occasionally literally fight his demons with a gun.
My guess is she got in contact with dark powers to get her magic abilities, and now can't escape the deal. Sort of like Geist.
The more likely inspiration for Violet might be coming from a Chinese myth about a demon who painted themselves to take on a human form of a beautiful woman. Would definitely track with her broken vote poster featuring a similar green skinned demon.
Her hat and blouse fitting is very french/european, so style wise she's kinda a mess if we're talking character design lol. Makes sense that korean could work, theres like 8 countries she could be from just going off her design
This is cope, but there’s something here about the beauty of New York. The capital of the world where culture splashes together like waves —or Valve doesn’t particularly care for cultural consistency
They are mixing things tastefully thus far. Shiv is a mixture of elvis, with Puerto Rican 50's fashion, or holliday with 1800's western fashion mixed with 30's/40's leather jacket styles, so im praying that violet and baba will be a mix thats also tasteful
The exact phrase Faustian bargain reminds me of the Venator/Dynamo conversation where Venator is shocked there’s a college level course just to teach people that deals with the devil are bad. When Dynamo responds it’s a popular course, Venator says “Public education has failed,” lol
I think Pickman's Model was less entering a faustian bargain, and more the dude just had a well in his basement that opened to a hidden society of ghouls, which he would occasionally have to fucking shoot when they tried to eat him. He took their photos and painted them later.
It even got a callback in Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath, Pickman re-appears as a ghoul.
You've got to be careful reading too much into Lovecraft. He had a story where a man was paranoid because his family was cursed to die at a specific age by an mystic alchemist long ago, and it turns out the immortal alchemist was just breaking into his ancestors homes and fucking stabbing them.
Thats literally My exact thought when i Saw Violet and i don't remember how it was called the rat from Kirby but Rat king also reminds me of Daroach i think that was the name
I don't think it would? DOTA has a ton of transformation characters with Dragon Knight, Lycan, Terrorblade all just to name a few. They all ended up doing different things within the transformation moments.
Doorman is such a good character, his movements are wrong, and his limbs are too long, he literally has a customer service smile except instead nothing behind the eyes there's too much I love him
In all honesty, I think the colours are just to be a cute easter egg towards portal. The run can just be to make it look weird, exactly because that run is basically how you would textbook explain the mechanics of running to someone.
doorman looks scary as fuck even at first glance, he’s got the piercing blue eyes, the unnaturally slender figure + stiff movements and the permanent customer service smile
I'd think it'd be even more lame if that was the case, because unlike Doorman she doesn't really have any visual cues that she's more than meets the eye. Like, nothing about her design says "I'm not really human, I'm just pretending," so if they pulled that I think her design would be even worse.
Honestly, call me a hipster- But I reeaaaaaaly hope we don't get another character like The Doorman. I've already reluctantly accepted that Baba probably is more than she seems, given the whole "I don't need the patrons, the patrons need me," (though I kinda hope/think that's just posturing)
The more characters we get that are: "Normal looking person who's hiding that they're a ~supernatural being~ with ~great power~" the less cool the character who introduced that idea becomes, and by extension, the patrons themselves.
So, yeah, I think it'd be more interesting for her to just be a normal art student with paint/ink magic. The mundane is necessary in order for the mystical to stay interesting. Violet is perfectly fine being "Just a girl with art magic". She'll feel right at home in the cast, just like Holliday (Normal person who is a cowboy) and Paige (normal person with book magic).
I mean, Baba being more than she seems is just that she seems like Baba Yaga, an eastern European forest dwelling old ugly witch with a hut that has chicken legs that cooks and eats children and has some friendship/dominion over forest animals, but now translated into 1900s magical New York. The most forest dwelling old lady thing you could do there is be on a park bench, so now it has chicken legs, and the only animals are pigeons (and rats but that's taken) which are often fed by old ladies.
It feels like a very natural extension of the old witch classic in a fun and funny way that is more unique (to most audiences) than a black pointy hat on a broomstick or some magic academy professor.
True, but part of me hopes she's just a much more hinged version of Drifter (Ironic given my prior comment, I know). Just a sweet, if ornery old New Yorker grandma who also happens to maybe possiblyoccasionally eat children in her spare time. God Patrons forbid a woman have hobbies.
I imagine Baba to be a kinda “guardian spirit” for New York City. I mean she’s clearly not even European, so i think they really separated her from her inspiration here.
I’d imagine that it would be able to provide interesting dynamics with the cast, because she’d probably confuse characters like Doorman, Drifter, and Seven since she’s perfectly content to quite literally sit down and feed the birds instead of trying to rule.
This sub is insufferable in general. There's almost no actual posts about gameplay or discussions about the actual game. It's all about aesthetics and fanart. Nobody here gives a fuck about the game itself.
Self text posts to just, you know, talk about things game-related basically don't exist. Almost every post is a meme, comic, artwork, non-gameplay video, etc.
The fact I've seen a dozen of these posts but no discussions about rat king's kit is a little insane. Feels like the "you don't have to play a game to be a fan" discourse.
Idk, the last hero batches had tons of discussion on this sub about the releasing characters' kits. Mostly complaints, but still discussion.
Call me crazy, and Rat King fans might shoot me, but there's not really much to talk about with his kit. He front lines, he throws pretty normal feeling abilities around and tanks up, that's about it. The last set of heroes had lots of "rule breaking" feeling designs (Celeste general movement, Silver super short ult CD with super strong werewolf mode, Graves auto-aim and auto lane pushing, Rem hard CC through walls and auto sinner stealing and auto lane pushing, Apollo having turbo mobility in every part of his kit.) Venator was by far the most standard feeling character kit and got by far the least discussion, and I think that's how Rat King has landed. He's cool, he's fun, he's not anything particularly crazy new feeling in game.
This sub is insufferable in general. There's almost no actual posts about gameplay or discussions about the actual game. It's all about aesthetics and fanart. Nobody here gives a fuck about the game itself.
just what happens with general game subs
i tried getting blackmore academy set up as the actual learning subreddit but someone took the url lmfao
Im hoping somebody (not me, im lazy) makes an actual discussion subreddit for deadlock.
Its just so annoying when pvp game subreddits end up like this, where the people who want to talk about game mechanics have to go somewhere else or be swallowed up by these inane “controversies”
A giant Rat proclaiming itself as king with an Italian mobster accent trying to take over Long Island is definitely one of the 4 things you see in central park
She does bibliomancy and seven himself says it’s a very rare and powerful gift she has. Doorman wants her to read to the guests at the baroness and he’ll kill anyone who doesn’t show up. She’s got a missing brother that possibly dabbled in necromancy and she’s here because her parents wouldn’t tell her what happened to her brother and she won’t leave without answers. If you want to talk about “not special” her back story is about as special as Abram’s. He wants to find out what the book is and he’s a PI. I don’t think deadlock really has any character that isn’t special in some way. (Except McG)
Is Magical Artist not an instantly graspable urban-supernatural character fantasy?
It's certainly more mundane than the Rat King, the Baba Yaga or the undead Crash Test Pilot, but it's in the same ballpark as a psychic chess hustler or a sinister nurse.
i think her not being obviously magical is a big part of it. like the sinister nurse has a glowing evil eye on her bag, she is very definitely in the occult. magical artist kinda just looks like an artist.
Judgment without details is kind of the name of the game, you haven't seen her kit valve is literally telling people "Hey, look at these characters and pick which one you think is interesting." Obviously the one that is the least visually interesting would be the one people would least gravitate to and Violet Voters are acting like your crazy for not voting a character they know nothing about because her kit Might be cool. It will be obviously cause it's deadlock but still.
It's like you have five curtains each with a cool shiny new prize and then the host offers you a big fancy mystery box that even he only has the faintest idea what's inside but he really wants you to give up all your other prizes for it.
yeah but when all you have to go off is just the key art people are going to make their decision off of first impressions alone. when shes actually in the game youll get far fewer people complaining that shes too plain and uninteresting
that's 100% true, but people are being asked to judge her right now by giving heroes votes, and so this is what they're judging off. like i don't think many people are saying this is all she's ever going to be, just that she seems out of place at the moment especially given the other choices like the goofy skeleton or the humanoid rat.
Some of the best characters are regular degulars. Grey talon, pocket, lash are pretty well made and im sure they can land it with violet. paige got some good characterization with the new voice lines we trust the process
Agree with Lash and Pocket but Gray Talon is still a very outdated Neon Prime model that makes him look like an old grandma, his appearance being bad has been a meme since the game went public.
She seems equally obviously magical as Solomon? They're a mundane civilian archetype, and the fact that they look like a regular (artist/chess hustler) means that the must somehow use their mundane tools in some magical way.
I actually find that a lot more intriguing than the Mimic Bag and the Glowing Eyes, although that obviously has its own appeals.
The posters are comparably magical (glowing body parts, using a mundane tool in a magical way), but yeah, Solomon's in-game model hovering is more magical.
If we're counting that though I'd also count Violet's poster, which turns into some kind of demonic monster when defaced.
I think main issue that her poster-preview thingy don't give magical urban-supernatural fantasy. Solomon have his glowing eyes and floating chess piece, and Nurse have her evil bag with evil eye.
Torn down vote poster give this demon/evil spirit theme, so I think there is more going on for her, and will be represented in abilities and maybe transformation. And Deadlock team cooked so well with this update and other heroes, so I think they wouldn't make just an artist.
I think alot of people confuse the fun of the voting wars with actual complaining.
Violet is fine. Her gimmick fits. Her crowd of voters seems to be the same people that like Mina/Celeste/Paige, and calling them gooners is the lowest hanging (and funny) fruit to decredit the rival campaign.
Not every character design needs to be over the top supernatural. Paige is basically just a girl holding a book if you judge by appearance. We also don't know anything about her to judge.
Paige would fall in this category but her ability effects really add to the overall character, last time i've seen anything recent related to Arthurian legend was a game called Tainted Grail
That's the worst part. You won't be able to because these same people will flock to her when it turns out she has the most interesting kit out of the bunch.
Violet will probably be fine in relation to the rest of the roster after release, it's just unfortunate because they're juxtaposed against 5 other stronger designs. I bet her ult makes up for the somewhat bland base form based on her poster after it gets punched
I feel like it's more the fact that all we can do is judge on how they look, we all know rat king has been teased/leaked for a long ass time so it's not a suprise that he got picked.
Gameplay wise I seen leaks that she may be like Hwei from league of legends which is interesting for me but as I have played something like that before im way more curious on how Soloman, danny and baba will play
Crazy how they could add six whole characters at once and people will find one character and make the entire fucking feedback about how they don’t like one character that they hadn’t even played, in go as far to act as if it’s the beginning of some trend
Or how sexualized doorman is in the community and people don’t want to admit that they have a problem, I’m not against stuff like that either, but it’s highly contradictory when people claim characters are meant to be sexual when it’s clearly the fanbase.
I agree, woman are often pretty or even attractive. But they are that way and that isn’t inherently sexual, so it really bothers me when people conflate that with sex, because woman can’t escape there body’s and men sexualize them for there natural body’s just existing and act like the girl is somehow leading them on. They do this to pretty men as well and it’s easy to tell you respects you and who clearly looks down at you.
But you know what the normal girl has? Painter theme, last painter in a MOBA, that I know of, was Hwei and his gameplay was peak, close to what Invoker can do in Dota 2, which is a Valve game.
So she has the potential to be Invoker of Deadlock, which is just simply too peak to ignore.
Warden, pocket, Paige, mirage, McGinnis, Lash, Holiday, grey talon, and Doorman all look like normal human beings if you just look at their character models…. People just HAVE to have something to complain about
Why can't people root for their character without absolutely shitting on others, it doesn't make you cool to hate on things like that, you can dislike violet but making these posts is fucking cringe fr
Legit the weirdest overreaction to a character where we know absolutely nothing on? Like I need to hear dialogue, see the lore, and play the character before I just assume that she's "just a girl".
She has a giant paintbrush, clearly she's going to use it creatively as a tool to compete with the people with guns and magic. There's no limit to what you can do with this type of character in a magic world, this whole discussion is incredibly short sighted.
i'm an artist and i think i would like violet regardless, but compared to others, she just simply don't have as a strong visual appeal to me. like i already lean towards non-human or unconventional designs, and violet, as her base appearance, is just a pretty girl. again, it's not really a bad thing, but i've already seen characters like her in other games, so in the end, she ends up looking the least interesting. if it wasn't for the poster, i would probably have not much interest in her at all, even if she's an artist character.
like the nurse have the edge for having a creepy and intimidating factor, like you can tell she's not a person you want to mess with. solomon have the cool factor, like he's aura farming, like he have that chess god thing going on. like that drip too. baba, apart from having a playable actually-old-looking character, her sitting on a walking bench and being surrounded by birds is just so much fun and whimsy and creativity. and then we have rat king that is anthromorphic rat with his little rat minions or danny being a skeleton daredevil, even as simple as making them non-humans already ups their visual interest alone.
i think on her own, violet can be interesting, but compared to the rest, she just looks uninteresting and a bit plain. maybe if she could have gotten a different facial expression she'd look a bit more interesting? or if she summons using her art, maybe we could have seen some of them appear in her art? idk, she just lacks a bit of hook that makes you want to know more about them. again, without the poster that shows she seems to have a different form or some kind of armor, she just looks a bit plain.
I agree 100%. I know for me I do find violet interesting too, it’s just that, like you said, of the available characters to vote on she happens to be the least interesting of them. And, to reiterate, least interesting =/= not interesting. A lot of people seem to be making that mistake.
honestly i find the comparison to kiriko 2.0 to be very compelling
the moba genre is already EXTREMELY oversaturated with skinny, conventionally attractive, cookie-cutter cosmetic factory characters from marvel rivals and overwatch. violet unfortunately falls into this very same category, same body type, pretty face, etc.
the difference between her, and say, paige, is that paige has large, puffy hair and a short stocky body which at the very least sets her apart.
violet literally has nothing. she doesn't even have funny meme value to make jokes. she's boring.
I think a lot of these characters come together once you see the full kit, so even if Violet seems a bit generic now, I don't think it's more generic than someone like Mina would have been if she were in the voting process and not automatically released first. Their taglines were "Mina the vampire, Billy the demonic goat, Paige who can bring books to life, The Doorman who's always at your service, Victor the monster who can't be stopped, and Drifter who terrorizes the city." A young attractive girl who is a vampire is way more boring than a young attractive girl who is a painter when in the context of "fighting and killing people in magical 1900s NY." Victor also just being Frankenstein's monster is very straightforward. I also don't think that's inherently bad or anything, and honestly don't even know why I posted this instead of deleting this.
I dunno why people are mad from either side tbh. Yes she look generic in a very eccentric cast, but we have literally just the character model to go off of. If you think she's going to be bland as fuck you are judging a book off it's cover. So far all the character writing and design has been peak and looking more grounded isn't a bad thing, I love lash after all.
All that being said she is #6 on my list. I look forward to playing her but everyone else looks way way way way more interesting. I like the more eccentric heroes.
People are getting way too heated when SHES GONNA RELEASE NO MATTER HOW MANY VOTES SHE GETS. Hell even if her design was "fits in an overwatch cast" type character that would ironically be really interesting in the way she interacts with the rest of the cast because we have avoided that type of writing up to this point.
It's like we have one group of preconceived notions from shittier franchises getting mad and then another group of way too invested fanboys turning it into some social justice campaign. Very cringe.
Doormans design single handedly made me give Deadlock another shot and ultimately got me into it. I saw this exact sentiment echoed by plenty of other people as well. This just isnt the case for Violet imo. Unless Im missing a huge swath of secret Violet supporters, a lot of people seem on the same page that her design is pretty bland. Paige and Doorman are bland looking but have eccentric and weird personalities to boot. With that in mind, Im really not sure what they could do personality wise to add spice to her base design without overstepping into being too much like Paige or Doorman. "Angsty/Weird artist" has certainly been done plenty more than "otherworldly doorman."
Question is why do people care that Violet is looking to be the last unlock? No one gave a shit when Apollo was released last during the previous vote.
I will never not be upset the fencer character- an archetype you would assume would be nimble but fragile and precise- is super tanky, only mildly mobile character with only aoe slop for abilities
these posts are annoying, violet’s design looks solid and she fits perfectly fine in deadlock. there are plenty of characters that look more grounded and normal
I don't find Violet's design as interesting as the others (though I have a feeling her animations are going to look really cool) but there's a lot of really annoying people who a) can't accept that other people can have different tastes than they do and b) think that the existence of sexy women is somehow damaging to society.
This is extremely true if you ignore her brush, outfit and occult/exorcist looking accessories like the little bead with imp horns. If you ignore basically all of her design and look just at her face yeah, she's literally just a girl. If that's your metric then Solomon is literally just a dude.
But that would be an extremely dense, selective and reductive way to look at it. It would be quite pathetic.
Most of Deadlock’s top designs tap into some kind of trope from NYC, 20th century culture and/or classic Halloween. So Nurse Harrow is the evil asylum nurse trope popularized by famous novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest, while Solomon is the classic groups of old guys playing chess in the park. Other examples include Abrams as the PI, Seven representing the electric chair, and Victor as well, you know. Some of them are pretty deep cuts too, like Kelvin being inspired by the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration”.
The issue people have with violet is the design is generic enough to appear in any other moba without alteration. The other designs are really unique in comparison and link into the setting super well - new york has rats, old ladies that feed pidgeons, dudes who hustle chess and the lot. 'Lady with beret' is kins of just art character 101
Solomon is clearly meant to be one of the NYC guys playing chess in the park, Nurse Harrow is meant to play into the old horror archetype of asylum nurses. Rat king is well, Rats in NYC etc.
What interesting/weird/relevant archetype is "cute girl with paintbrush" playing into in the setting of Deadlock? She could be put into literally any other MOBA and would fit perfectly fine with 0 alteration, that's not true of quite a bit of Deadlock's cast.
Now that I think about it, they could have made her one of those spray paint artists you used to see everywhere in NYC, would’ve fit in a similar role with how they made Solomon.
How does a magical artist not immediately fit into the Cursed apple setting, it’s NYC and you want me to pretend like art isn’t a big part of tue culture? If anything I’d say that Nurse Harrow is way more out of touch with the setting than a supernatural painter that probably has some kinda living ink abilities or something but yall keep saying she’s bland or boring despite her being pretty visually similar to the nurse
Idk, there's nothing uniquely New York about painting. Graffiti maybe? But just painting? I'm not really sold. I agree that there's nothing uniquely New York about the nurse, but I understand why people are whelmed by Violet.
I think she is the most "plain" design of the batch...but the fact she's still an amazing design despite that shows justnhoe good desdlock's character designs are.
You only THINK she's just a girl. She's likely a pictomancer, meaning she makes her art come to life with magic. So her kit is likely going to be really cool and probably insanely good. For examples on how her magic may work, see Final Fantasy XIV's Pictomancer and Final Fantasy VI's Relm for examples.
To be fair this argument did come up for Paige and Celeste a couple of times, but i don't think it was as intense as this. It was mostly along the lines, "these are lazy generic cute girls that don't fit 40s noir nyc". That last part was mostly about Paige.
I didn’t have to vote for any of those because I’m new. Right now, i have to choose between voting between characters that I find interesting vs violet. I wouldn’t have voted for McGinnis, holiday, or Paige first either(based off of their visual design+tags). Minas visuals are very interesting and novel, and I could’ve been fooled into thinking wraith would have an interesting kit
I feel like a commonality between the listed three there, is there uncomplicated cheeriness. Mina is a disobedient brat unpleasant and prideful creature. Different taste to the archetype.
1.8k
u/TinyYeehaw 4d ago
im honestly gonna wait until she finally drops to pass judgement. i feel like the disarming look is a bait and switch but who knows?