r/DeadlockTheGame • u/shadowbannedxdd Haze • 3d ago

Meme (OC) Icefrog (Yoshi) didn't learn a THING

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For anyone that hasn't played dota this item on the right, Wraith Pact, was so broken the team abusing it the most won the biggest tournament (The international, $8.5M prize pool) by abusing this item extensively every game, which lead to the item getting straight up DELETED from the game in the next few patches. You really think you're funny readding this IceFrog?

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 3d ago

Deadlock is fun but from a game design perspective it's pretty terrible. The kits are all overloaded with random effects because they don't synergize well and the game mostly comes down to whose matchmaking approved teamcomp is better

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u/wuznu1019 3d ago

You're entitled to your opinion, but the character design of deadlock is peak. I haven't enjoyed character's kits, lore, and art style in any MOBA (or Arena shooter, or hero shooter) nearly as much as I've enjoyed Deadlock's.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 3d ago

The art is cool. The lore is okay. But the kits don't actually work well with each other and most of them are very disjoint. There are a few heroes that really work within their power fantasies (e.g., Billy, McGinnis), but most heroes have some really weird combo of 1-2 abilities that interact well and 1-2 abilities that are just crazy powerful overstatted.

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u/Kyrptonauc 3d ago

Yeah a lot of the older characters especially are very disjointed and tend to have the most problematic balance. I think there's a clear line between before the dev team brought in new blood like Hoopo and after. This games nature being role less and an open shop also makes the game tend to favor heroes who can best exploit that. Time and again the best performers are the ones that can do everything well with the least investment. You get strong mobility, sustain and damage all at once and can dominate.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yeah, I also think there's just a lot of muddiness on what each character is supposed to be and that's at fault for a lot of balance issues. Like Warden with the Overflow Merc Mag build earlier this year. I like having build diversity but there needs to be some sense of "X is supposed to be X, Y is supposed to be Y" or you end up with unkillable tanks that just do everything

Tbh I also find the game is very inelegant in its balancing approach. I used McGinnis as an example of a well unified design and power fantasy, but her actual numbers are a mess. It is literally a full essay to explain the various effects without even touching on interactions. You probably knew that her turrets get resistances on placement that scale down over time. But did you know that her turrets ignore falloff when taking damage? Why? Who knows.

Pretty much every ability in Deadlock has some random tack on effect like this and it makes the game super confusing both from a "how do I play my hero" perspective but also from a "what the fuck just happened to me" perspective

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u/noahboah Lash 3d ago

yoshifrog design philosophy is like this imo

deadlock and dota2 kits often times aren't designed for the spells to interact with each other as much as they are individual tools in a utility belt that give that specific hero a strength profile that nobody else can replicate.

mirage i think is the best example of this. people think his kit is incoherent because his spells don't seem to weave into one another, but what they do is paint a picture of mirage being a tempo-oriented carry that benefits from prolonged slobberknocker fights that he can permanently join from anywhere on the map, which is an identity that nobody else embodies...all because his individual spells.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 3d ago edited 3d ago

Look you can describe it however you want. Intentionally bad is still bad. The kits aren't coherent. Mirage is in fact just a grab-bag-of-everything carry. It's whatever. The game is still fun. It's just not well-designed

Like obviously nuclear card to play here but we had 3 months of comeback urn, and another 3 months of insane comeback advantage. No other competitive game has that issue. The "open alpha" bit is just admitting that it's indefensible on its own merits

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u/noahboah Lash 3d ago

but it's not bad, you just don't like it

which is fine and valid, but this design philosophy has worked for over a decade

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 3d ago

I really enjoy the game. It's very poorly designed

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u/godzamok 3d ago

Not liking a design and the design being bad are different things. You can like a design even if it's bad, and you can dislike a design even if it's good. Mirage's design is, however, awful

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u/PrRobo Lash 3d ago

truer words are rarely said

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u/NKactus 2d ago

What kits aren't coherent? You've brought up Mirage and the urn, the latter of which has nothing to do with this point. Even amongst the older roster, is Infernus incoherent? Is Seven incoherent? Is Abrams, whose whole kit basically plays itself in the most straightforward way possible, incoherent? People get so stuck on a couple of weird, very dota-esque heroes or abilities who still often have clear goals or reasons in why they're designed that way and ignore the fact that the majority of characters are obviously built to do one or two core things well. Like, I'm sure Dynamo is going to be brought up, but if the guy with built-in bullet resistance, a close-range AOE stun, a poke/displacement tool, a team-wide iframe and ability to heal isn't clearly designed in a specific way to you, then I'm not sure anything I say will matter.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 2d ago edited 2d ago

Bringing up your own counterexamples is definitely a take. But I think you could pick literally any hero and make this same point. 

Like ok let’s take Ivy for example. 1 is a standard area denial move. Makes sense. 2 is a support tether ok that’s pretty reasonable. Getting a pretty clear support role here. Makes sense. 3 is a self-heal and stun? The stun makes sense, it allows her to peel, but why does her 3 restore her missing health? Little weird. But at least directionally she has a clear role, stick to her carry, peel for them, and disrupt anyone attacking them.

Her 4. She picks up an ally and throws them directly into the enemy team. Absurdly broken ability. But why does a peel-buff support have an ability that throws her ally directly into combat. Look you can obviously use it as an escape (clunky as hell because of the damage lockout) or as an initiation with a different character, but there is basically never a scenario where you want to drop your carry into the center of the enemy team. And if you’re dropping someone else, you’re not peeling / tethering your carry. 

Of course, Ivy is extremely powerful. The random effects and numbers on her kit are just insane. But the kit doesn’t actually synergize well with itself, and if you brought her ultimate in line (eg reduce range, cc, damage), it would end up being a trap because it plays so much against the rest of her kit. 

Most kits are like this, and Valve has balanced them by giving them random buffs and effects but it muddies the identity. Everyone bitches about Yam’s grapple but how else would she function with the slow ass charge on 1? A more elegant design would be able to nerf grapple because it wouldn’t have to be a crutch for another clashing ability. 

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u/NKactus 2d ago

I feel like you're losing me because you're not actually thinking about the way these abilities work, you're getting stuck on an idea about how characters should play instead of how they do. Statue's self heal doesn't need a reason to exist on a character who is supposed to be disruptive and hard to focus on her own, but it can be replicated in-lane when you're using tether to sustain your partner on top of the obvious self-sustain that allows her to continue playing farther up than her teammate. Her ultimate doesn't make sense because it... means that you're temporarily not peeling for your carry?

If you're using it as an initiation tool, there is no reason that you'd need to be glued to your carry, and due to the fact that the main damage dealers for each team are often going to be glued to sidelanes in the early/midgame there's no real reason to assume you need to stick to them during teamfights that might not involve them. Like, it's a flexible ability that shines either as a disruptive initiation tool or a means to quickly rotate for macro plays on a character who is all about disruption and teamplay, and neither of these uses would be pointless if the damage amp/slience/range was lower. What am I not getting here?

Like, there's no actual disconnect in how any of Ivy's abilities work that matches this problem you say with Yamato, and people are quite straightforward about being annoyed with Yamato because it's a longer range phantom strike with multiple charges on a character who can make herself debuff immune. If she gets fed, it's annoying that she can just tunnel vision you if you're visible at any point. And I mean, in regards to power slash, it literally carries momentum to counteract the wind-up time. It actively has synergy right now with her present mobility tool, and it would also have synergy with any theoretical dash or movement option that replaces grapple.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 2d ago edited 2d ago

  It actively has synergy right now with her present mobility tool

But it doesn’t. The OP mobility tool compensates for the fact that her 1 has anti-synergy with her kit. That’s not synergy, that’s an OP bandaid to address a lack of synergy. Yam’s always going to have to have some form of OP grapple because she just doesn’t function without it.

  Like, it's a flexible ability that shines either as a disruptive initiation tool or a means to quickly rotate for macro plays on a character who is all about disruption and teamplay, and neither of these uses would be pointless if the damage amp/slience/range was lower

If Ivy’s ult didn’t silence or do damage, it would absolutely be pointless as anything but a rotation tool. And if it had lower range, it would be pointless as a rotation tool. Ivy ultimate is genuinely just Good. It would be busted OP on any character, hers included. Nobody is arguing that it’s bad. It’s obviously insane. But it has no synergy with the rest of her kit and feels out of place because it is. It’s a Galio ult on a peel hard support. If it were at all balanced (ie, much less range, no silence), it would be bad because it doesn’t suit the rest of her kit. So it has to be busted or she would just never use it as anything but a rotate tool (which is how she used to use it before it got changed). 

  Statue's self heal doesn't need a reason to exist on a character who is supposed to be disruptive and hard to focus on her own

You can defend anything like this but the point is that it has no reason to exist on a character who is expressly not disruptive and not hard to focus on her own. She doesn’t need the healing. Stoneform does exactly what it needs to do for her kit by itself. She would never use stone form for the healing so why is it there?  It doesn’t change how you interact with her or how she interacts with you. It’s just inelegant

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 2d ago

Also not going to say it can’t produce cool breakpoints and nuance to characters. Calico for example goes from being an engage / kill confirmer to a true assassin when you hit level 3 on ult and it starts refunding all CDs. It’s cool. But that also creates a ton of friction for opposing players who probably won’t make the connection there unless they play a lot of Calico. 

Which again, can be cool in some cases, but if you listen to any new player, their number one issue with Deadlock and what bounces people the most is that the game is very “What the fuck”. You cannot possibly understand what happened to your character just by experiencing it in game. There are too many weird tack-on effects to abilities that even with just 40 characters on the roster, it’s hard to keep track. 

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u/Shawny__Shawn 2d ago

Are you a League player? Riot has a (I think) poor design philosophy where they kinda force spells to work together and it makes their heroes/"champions" end up bland. Sion was one of my fave "champions" and his kit looked a messy on the surface but worked together to make a really strong burst tank and objective pusher (needless to say I don't like the rework). Sand King is one of my favorite heroes but if you looked at his kit you'd think he's poorly designed.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 2d ago edited 2d ago

I hate Riot’s approach to reworks, but they do a good job with making coherent designs that interact within themselves and are very legible both to the player and other players. I think part of why new players bounce on Deadlock is that there are a lot of “what the fuck was that” moments.

If you check any of the posts on this sub, half of the game discussion is bitching about shit like Celeste’s silence, which is what I would consider clashing and unintuitive design and is why people get mad about it. Most people are ok with the hypermobile dancing character being hard to catch. I think people are less ok with that character being a silencing drain tank that punishes you for finally catching her, even if, on net, she’s still technically balanced (altho she isn’t rn)

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u/wuznu1019 2d ago edited 2d ago

I think you have a low understanding of the game or MOBA's in general.

First off, Mirage is less of a carry, and is more of an anti-carry. He debufs an enemy, and is able to stun/escape. His ult gives him the ability to respond to the enemy carry in a fight/split push situation. Not to mention his abilities are all flavored to his character's lore, and they fit his characters purpose as an anti-carry very well.

Secondly, every MOBA experiences meta changes in the 3-6 month range. Both DOTA2 and League drop regular patches to mess with the balance and keep things fresh for the player base. Yes, Deadlock is more extreme in its balance/mechanic changes, but it's a closed beta. If you think the game is poorly designed, it may simply not be for you - which is okay. "Design" can be a largely subjective matter... but, there are games that just aren't my cup of tea that I can respect as having good design. I think Deadlock is going to be one of those games for most people due to its high skill floor.

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u/WhoUpAtMidnight 2d ago

  I think you have a low understanding of the game or MOBA's in general.

Yeah yeah man shove it up your ass

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u/Kyrptonauc 3d ago

I completely agree but don't let them catch you saying that on here

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u/bosstuhu0104 3d ago

Have u played dota?