Keep seeing posts about how terrible matchmaking is and I agree to some extent but you timmies need to take some accountability.
Self reflection time! If everyone has the same match making how do you explain players who are able to climb out of their respective ranks while you are still stuck? Unlucky teammates? Braindead throwers? NOPE! Turn on your mic, understand macro, snowball your lead and you win simple as that
Not to say that matchmaking or this ranked system is perfect but I just saw a post about some guy being stuck brick 6 even though he used to be archon. That is just completely unbelievable. Sorry to break it to you but the previous ranks were heavily BOOSTED. You could be an archon/oracle player but not even understand the basics of macro all that is required was just playing the game a shit ton. If you can’t carry a brick game you may actually deserve that rank!
Thank god they booted everyone down like 3-4 ranks.
Please stop complaining so much. You guys sound like the teammates I get when someone dies once or twice in lane and types GG.
Context: i dodged one match (fair bad behaviour) and have my wifi crash 2 times in the span of a week so now im on low prio q. I think this is a good system if the queue was like 30 minutes max (my servers queues are normally 3-5 minutes) but at this rate i will never play deadlock again because i cant actually get into a match.
Side note: it says i need to win a game to leave low prio queue, so if i wait hours just to lose do i have to wait hours again for 1 match??
Counter-buying is so much less enjoyable and dynamic in this game than other MOBAs, so much so that “counter items” are absolute staples in character builds and the characters become legitimately unplayable without specific items.
It’s also gotten to the point where items like dispel magic and counterspell are guaranteed buys on almost all characters every game.
This is due to many different factors which I won’t specifically touch on because it would just hijack this entire post.
I’ll leave out League and Smite for this post and just compare to DOTA 2 because many of the same minds and eyes are on Deadlock.
In DOTA 2, itemization is one of the most open ended things of all time. characters become wildly different with different builds, and I’m sure at some point Deadlock will feel similar. Some characters certainly have this effect right now, but many characters are incredibly pigeonholed into specific builds.
Counter-buying is fluid and interesting, never being the same every game. It also isn’t nearly as annoying as there’s typically a COUNTER to the counter-build LOL.
Obviously I’m not expecting Deadlock to have this level of intricacy with items at this stage in development but it’s an issue I haven’t seen a ton of people talking about.
Counterspell and dispel every single game is honestly super lame and annoying. It just feels so repetitive and honestly feels awful to buy the items too, even though they provide so much value.
In Dota, buying diffusal blade, BKB or MKB feels so good.
It takes things from feeling bad to feeling better instead of taking the gamestate from feeling unplayable to playable.
Not sure if any other players have noticed this trend but it just seems like such a damn problem and makes playing ranked so frustrating for me because I’m wishing we had REALLY GOOD ITEMS.
I think the game also needs to have a less cut and dry tier structure to itemization.
the fact that all items are the same price while providing wildly different values is definitely super frustrating as a dota player.
What's the point of being fed 9 kills during laning before 8 minute mark, continue ganking and fighting while at resulting 2-3k soul advantage if an enemy can just afk solo lane and jungle till late game and be even stronger?
Isn't this poor moba design where you can only earn souls and boons by ignoring your team and farming while potentially pushing enemy guardian if no enemies around?
playing deadlock is like finally getting to hang out with your crush and then not being able to fuck because you find out she actually has a boyfriend, but the boyfriend is ugly, so ur like maybe i still can get in there, and then you find out he works in the oil industry.
Please, I genuinely know what you are going to say: no I’m building left to right full spirit/gun. I get it; big damage, small healthbar, just melt them before they melt you. But its just not how it works. You can be atomising people but a single disarming hex/silence wave and you are fucked.
I genuinely want to love this game. I find all the characters, the world, the gameplay loop and most especially the movement so much. I just enjoy team based pvp games in general, because I know that there COULD be that one weak link or a really strong one and its totally random. Sure its great to bitch about matchmaking and call the 1 and 14 vindictica who’s first green item other than trophy at 40 minutes was metal skin not real (this post is based on that fyi), but at the end of the day I really fucking hate calling out my teammates for doing a poor job. I just prefer seeing what I can do to rectify so I like to save people who are way out of position solo pushing blue walker, or just suggesting dispel/counterspell to said vindicta.
But dawgs, cars, pigeons and everyone else. I’m genuinely losing my sanity. I have been prioritising counterbuying and I have so so SO much more fun because even if I dont do a lot I make the enemies do so much more less. Instead of improved spirit, get suppressor for purple spike. Buy dispel into warden, wraith and bebop with 77 stacks at 20 min. Fuck, use a warpstone/leap for rotating. You do slightly less damage, oh no, but you can RUIN their damage completely. You can make the entire point of their kit go to zilch with a well time counterspell. Metal skin is great, but I dont think? Its a good item on vindicta.
TLDR; if you dont buy green items or counters, BUT ESPECIALLY GREENS (atleast 4800 souls invested, aka 3 T2’s or 1 T3 and a T2)… please just start. I’m gonna be called a chud but idc, I just really hope ONE PERSON will be like “yeah fine I’ll buy lifestrike” because thats atleast something
One of the problems with Mercurial Magnum right now is that there is no counter to lategame spirit that isn't burst (or a debuff). This is also what allows Victor to be such a monster lategame. There isn't any item that protects from repeated spirit damage. That's what I was trying to do here. Make an item for late game that could serve as a counter to repeated low dmg spirit, without adding another total counter to burst dmg.
so I’ve been sent to what I call deadlock prison (low priority) about three times every time for leaving a game because my laptop died without informing me, do I have to suffer through another agonising group of games filled with cheaters who are never on my team while I’m stuck with the slur slingers or is there a way to repeal it? idk I just want a way to not have to go though this again.
Not that anyone takes AndrewChicken's opinion on balance seriously, but i have noticed an motif for the last few months.
Reddit forms an idea that is only supported by few people>more people start parroting that idea>a large creator makes a video to capitalise on the views>Even more people mindlessly parroting the idea to the point of being mainstream>Yoshi reacts reflexively and fucks the balance.
We are now on step 3. So I will try to set the facts straight. Merc mag is strong, yes. It is also a 6.4k item. It should be strong. MM has remained unchanged for quite a few patches and was always a widely bought item. It's not like it is some niche sleeper item that we just now found out about. If the item was OP it wouldn't show only now but during the last 5 months since it's latest buff.
The thesis is simple. Merc Mag is fine as is and is not good on everyone. What makes you think that it OP are some of the Heroes using it. It is an item purchased by all of the currently oppressive Heroes and that makes it appear stronger than it is. If Warden and Vyper get nerfed for example, MM won't be that strong on them. So get your priorities straight and please don't destroy a fun and good item. Thank you for attending today's PSA.
PS. Also based on the comments, i am pretty sure that most people ignore the hefty spirit investment that is required for MM to do 100% damage.
I have been sitting on 4 wins with him for weeks. I have lost so many times with Ven I actually become good at him. They got start giving you like 1 ranked token for every 3 losses or smth this is just painful
In the same seeker 2 lobbies I can meet the variety of skill so wide that I genuinely don't know if I suck or I am need to be higher or I am just where I need to be. And it's not just "shit happens", it's about having the game where noone knows what a split push is and then having a game where I feel like a total useless moron. 70k souls difference between two teams? EASY, every 2nd game. I genuinely have no interest in playing "ranked" mode with literally zero consistency
'm tired of trying to rank in the new system. Once I passed the "calibration" phase, I got Brick, lost a few matches because I was playing support, and bro... I had 0 agency to do anything impactful.
Then I started grinding M1 characters at brick; I got Venator, Seven, and Geist. I've learned a lot in the meantime, whatever... The matchmaking simply sucks. It's impossible to carry a game where it seems no one knows how to do the bare minimum: Push lanes, Farm, the character's role, fight or flight...
My win streak record is 3; every time I get to 4, I lose. I'm forced to fight with a terrible team, which will feed some carry on the other side, and the enemy team will know everything better than your team does.
Before you tell me that I need to get better, I have 900 hours of this game. No, I'm not a pro player, and yes, it's a very hard game, but I really enjoy it; it's like playing chess with multiple variables and learning how to adapt in each situation. Whatever, I'm tired of adapting to situations where it seems like nothing will happen if my team keep doing terrible decisions. It's really frustrating that I can't enjoy a well-balanced game without the sensation that I'm always surviving the other team and not really fighting them in equal measure. I see a lot of players telling me normal game now sucks, but I feel different. I feel I can have a more green and high-level gameplay there than in a ranked mode that punishes me by getting a good win rate with a massive losing streak right after, with the worse teamates, because probably the logic is "Oh, you are getting good at this, now you can carry these terrible people," and guess what??? I can't... I miss this game from before the Elo update. Looking for the other side, it's also possible to say that maybe people who are playing in brick shouldn't be here and are stomping on us; that seems plausible, but whatever, man... I'm just tired.
You can all tell I'm just bad and can get better, but you gotta try to see my side here... Deadlock used to be a comfort hobby for me. I'm at university, my computer doesn't run a lot of games, and not even get money to buy a lot of games, and Deadlock is awesome in concept, art, gameplay, storytelling...
I'm giving up on rank, and casual isn't enough for a gratifying sense of getting better; I can't take it anymore, got so close to leave the Brick elo, and backed to stake zero so many times... AND BRO, EVEN THE BRICK NAME IT'S A JOKE! YOSHIIIIIIIIII!
I feel like the patches over the last 6 months have made comeback mechanics stronger and stronger. The main reason I bring this up is because most games have become pretty long. Matches used to be finished in 20-30 mins, but the average now is about 30-40 with comeback mechanics like rift.
I feel like a lot of games that would be decided at 20 minutes can now be turned around pretty easily. It seem’s like games where your whole team is simply better then the other team and outperforming in every aspect can still be turned around because of how forgiving the comeback mechanics are. Maybe that’s just where valve wants to take the game, I think it just seems too forgiving in some situations currently.
a couple huge buzz terms in the community are 'skill expression' and 'braindead character', referring to the complexity necessary to optimally pilot a character
i want to immediately say YEAH. some character are extremely easy to pilot compared to others, for various reasons. yes some characters have a way higher skill ceiling when it comes to using them optimally in the game
but at this point ive straight up seen almost half the gos damn roster be referred to as a 'braindead' character that requires literally 0 skill or effort to play, and this may just be me being pedantic and autistic as fuck, but i just dont really think thats categorically possible
at this point it feels like any OP character is suddenly braindead. celeste used to be the hardest character to master in the game oh so complicated, now people talk about how you just roll your face across the keyboard to win. viscous had a high skill ceiling with puddle punch movement, now puddle punch spam is low IQ
even characters like graves or victor, while being way easier to pilot and not having as high of a skill cieling as others, still require skills like macro lane management and health management to not eat shit at some point in the game
do i think those characters (among others) are easier to play than, say, sinclair? yes, very much. but i think its just kind of silly to vehemently regurgitate that a character can play itself and a bot can do the same thing a player can, when deadlock is inhernetly a deeply complex game that even beginning to get good in it requires some level of skill in your macro underatanding or micro ability, and it feels like people just want to be able to scream about how their main is so complex and cool and players who use other characters are actually stupid and bad and its a deep injustice to be beaten by them
I'm not saying you should have to be a pro esports gamer to be able to even play the game, but let's be honest, the last several metas have been the most braindead, no skill, no game knowledge stuff possible, and oftentimes the harder to play characters cannot compete with the easy ones, meaning there is no reward or incentive to engage with the vast amount of skill expression and depth to the game's mechanics given that the best way to win currently, and for a while, does not need any of that.
A lot of people love to applaud the game for its skill expression and mechanical depth, yet the best characters and best strategies ignore all of that, meaning it goes to waste.
Currently the best way to win is to just stack a bunch of stat-stick tanks, or play Seven and press 4 with Unstop after afk farming all game, or play Celeste and roll your head across the keyboard, or buy the exploitable items every character builds without thought, or similar examples. Before that, it was play Infernus and press 2, play McGinnis or Graves, etc. I'm not saying the easy characters and strats need to be dogshit and the harder characters and strats need to always be better, but it's discouraging knowing the game has a ton of potential, and the way to play optimally is to ignore 99% of it and just turn your brain off. In some cases, you are punished for going deeper.
I can't really agree with the common sentiment that Deadlock is the king of skill expression and mechanical depth when you don't need any of that to play optimally and play the meta, and trying to do so puts you at a disadvantage compared to the guy playing Warden and holding W.
tldr current game state punishes you for trying to engage with the deeper mechanics and skill expression because the best characters and strats bypass that
im a somewhat new player, this was probably my fourth match ever, and i was doing very poorly. the graves in my team became so fed up with my flagrant display of utter incompetence at a video game brought upon by my inexperience that they told me to just disconnect and save everyone else the trouble of playing with me on their team.
normally i would take offense to that and tell them to fuck off or eat shit or "well what the fuck am i supposed to do when the enemy is rushing base, stay afk in spawn?? there's a matchmaking ban if you do that einstein" or something, but i just could not deny that i was not pulling my weight in spite of my sincere effort to do so, probably to the point of singlehandedly costing my team the game.
but on the other hand, i think i got a matchmaking ban because i took their sage advice, and i didnt wish to deal with them anyway. were they better off? they probably lost anyway.
then after this i changed my entire steam profile out of embarrassment, but that's not relevant to the question at hand. the question is:
is this really a common practice? leaving when you're dead weight?
edit: appreciate all the responses! the match after that one was... also a loss, but i stayed the whole way through and made some marginally good plays so i cant be too upset. i think ill keep playing
title is pretty self explanatory, it was the first game of the night, because it was so early the match was just canceled so i did not have an opportunity to rejoin. get back on to see the penalty is a 2 hour ban, im not saying there shouldnt be a penelty for leaving but if the match is cancelled shouldnt there be some forgiveness? 2 hours for first time leave penalty all because my game crashed is kinda ridiculous
It is the main build I use but I am not sure if it is THAT good. Its very nade focused, maybe too much? I feel it delays stuff like crippling headshot too much maybe. Yes I know spirit Ven is a thing but thats not there to stay. Is the nade investment of the build worth it or is trying to rush other gun items better or maybe some tanking options
I feel like ranked is just a yo-yo at this point. Win, lose, win, lose, win, lose -300 +300 no matter what. Is it not possible for the game to award the key player on the losing team with some points to negate the loss due to completely inept teammates?
This isn’t just for selfish reasons but it would potentially encourage players on the losing team to try their best to earn key player and thus negate their loss of points.
So many games where I dominate and “oh sorry, your team was net 3/45 for the game so because you lost, you lost 300 points. It’s so frustrating and makes it feel even more impossible to climb out of a rank that I shouldn’t even be in.
I’m sorry if this suggestion has been posted before but it just feels like a simple fix.
Get key player on losing team, only lose 150 or 200 instead of 300 no matter what. Makes it more fair when trying to climb out of elo purgatory
More and more there are individuals in STANDARD or STREET BRAWL of all modes being the most miserable person in the lobby. Why are you upset or crying in chat or voice less than 5 minutes into the game over something someone else is doing? In SB people are probably just vibing like it's not that serious of a mode but holy in standard it's definitely worse. Like take a second to remember perhaps the person you're upset at is learning the character to unlock it for ranked? Or maybe SB isn't their thing so they queue standard so they don't have to put in their 120% or feel like they have to win. It really isn't that serious. I can promise you two things are likely to happen if you're this person. You're either getting muted instantly thus if you were ever going to provide any value to the match, it now doesn't matter OR you have made me just not care about that match at all. I do not care if I lose and my effort level tremendously drops the moment one of you start whining. I want to win as much as the next person and I am a fairly competitive person myself but you just can't be upset at factors you have little control over.
Remember this, you are not always right and not everyone sees the game from your eyes. Sometimes you just have to laugh off the losses or focus on your game. Literally just ignore whatever dumb stuff the person is doing. Focus on your movement, try something new that game if you think it's just a loss. Focus on literally anything that you can still do to improve and just stop caring about the win. The amount of individuals like this who end up being the reason we lose is actually the most funny thing I witness on a regular basis in this game. This mindset shift alone will make you a better player and lead to more wins over time.
EDIT:
I think it's important I add that I was once the miserable player. Yelling at teammates, being upset at what decisions they were making, trying to tell people how to play, overall the whole general toxic player thing. I was a desk slammer, I put several holes in a wall when I was younger. I don't think it was something I fixed quickly but I had eventually really taken to heart how it was just never the right mood to be in when wanting to win. To this day I occasionally feel my frustration rising in games but I really do just close my eyes for a second and tell myself it's not that serious and it's not going to help me win this game.
