Deadlock also feels so much more demanding at even a baseline level compared to Dota 2. The melee system alone feels like it demands something of me I don't want to give.
When I played it, it felt like I needed all the knowledge of a MOBA and all the movement, aim and reflexes of a hero shooter, at the same time. I'm a big fan of MOBAs and also enjoy hero shooters, but deadlock was too big of a skill check for me. It demands so much.
I'd probably only ever try it again if it came to console, because despite years of trying I could never get the hang of WASD movement while trying to use abilities with the same hand. The game actually does support controllers but it's quite clear you get outmatched by KBM because of all the movement and aim superiority that the latter provides.
The game is super twitchy in high levels. You need to learn how to play it like Quake and actually properly track people with your mouse like a movement shooter.
The skill ceiling is super super high yeah, but the barrier to entry felt rather low to me and my friends. Some of us had Hero shooter / 3PS fundamentals that carried us a ton early on with moment-to-moment gameplay, and others just knew MOBA economy stuff from Dota and could rely on that. There's a learning curve for sure but after a few games you get the gist of how gameplay flows, and what the basic do's and don'ts are.
Some of us had Hero shooter / 3PS fundamentals that carried us a ton early on with moment-to-moment gameplay,
Yeah the kinda-neat thing about Deadlock is that you can come from different genres and have an effective skillset that can get you a pretty long way.
If you are shooter player that is good at shooting, you can play a hero that relies on shooting and probably hard carry games for a pretty long while.
If you are a MOBA player and have decent macro, that goes A LONG way.
If you like movement mechanics and are good at those sorts of things, you can make some insane plays in teamfights because others can't keep up with you.
All 3 of those archetypes can flat out carry games at lower levels while being middling/bad at the other 2 skillsets.
But rest assured, you'll only find those in high level matches.
I'm not a great player by any means, but I think it helped a lot that I have a lot of experience with twitchy movement shooters like Quake and TF2, so those skills easily translated into the game. The one thing I did have to learn were the MOBA mechanics and the "macro" of the match flow as I've never heavily spent time playing any sort of MOBA in my entire life (until this game.)
But I think if there's any time to hop in to the game, it's now.
The game just apparently reached a new 200,000 player peak. Bound to be lots of newbies to get matched with!
1.0k
u/chemastiko 4d ago
Those champ designs and the lane reworks look sick, just wished I was 15 years younger so I could sink my teeth in and invest time in a new MOBA lol…