Sidenote: As I was editing this video, I noticed I did not address a lot of people's request: to go full open beta. While I understand the sentiment (getting more players), I believe that all the other changes I would like are more important, because while going open beta would boost the playerbase short term, it would not maintain the playerbase any better - we would just witness a 2nd decline over weeks or months again. They can go open beta once they have more heroes and a draft system IMO. Thanks for watching!
To be honest i dont see going open beta doing anything, its insanely easy to get keys as it is right now and almost anybody who WANTS to play the game can. Outside of the people who wont play simply because they need a key it would likely just be a small temporary player number boost. This is all assuming Valve doesnt go for a marketing push of some sort whe moving to an open beta, that could make a larger impact for sure.
One kinda related thing is people really underestimate how hard it is to make anyone stay in multiplayer game without any lootbox and reward system in place. I know it's hard for some to imagine or acknowledge, but players nowadays are way too addicted to this multiplayer games gambling stuff... I'm not really a fan of that either, but I'm speaking as someone from gamedev about gaming normies. And this is also not a system you want to deal with without finished game in this development state... I mean there are even whiteboxes :D
@@milansvancara I find it really surprising and a bit depressing that the majority of people seem to be more motivated by extrinsic rewards (shiny cosmetics and battle passes) than intrinsic rewards (the game is fun to play). I can't see any other explanation for the playerbase declining this much. For me cosmetics usually end up detracting from competitive games because it starts a flashiness arms race, which ends up making teamfights harder to read.
@@Bspammer Yup, I wholeheartedly agree, it's depressing, especially for us developers. We strive to avoid these but we are forced to compel to the overwhelming demand by players (even those who claim to not want it oftentimes end up indirectly complaining about it missing). For example mobile game market is atm just pure gambling in different coats with little to no exceptions due to demand...
Open beta without the changes you mentioned would be a big stab to the heart of this game. Open beta should be paired with a big patch with new heroes, map changes, draft, new ranked/unranked queues, and maybe some new objectives on the map.
Personally, Deadlock has held my attention like no other game except maybe Team Fortress 2. I’ll be around as long as I can get games in and I hope the game as a whole succeeds.
I'm in exactly the same boat brother, I've been uninterested in video games since I was in comp tf2, figured I had just grown up. Deadlock comes out and im playing 30 hours a week again.
Same except I went from being an OW fan to only playing Deadlock now. Love the game and it has so much to it, more than any other PvP I have played in years.
your first point is so real, keeping up with all the changes is kind of a nightmare if you aren't playing deadlock competitively every day. feels like by the time i understand the effects of a patch the next one is already there. been so hard to keep on top of itemization in particular that i just end up watching more than playing to save myself the headache lol.
i get where you're coming from, but it's not like they straight out delete items (unless it's being heavily abused and de-purposed like the self revive). Mostly it's smaller value changes, so that the items are all still viable, it's just that there might be another item which just had become *a little more efficient* than the one you were using previously, which is rare in itself, because for example i didn't really change my optimal builds for my chars since .. 1-2 months. So you don't have to "always be optimal" with your build, there's many more factors than just the items and keeping up with their balancing
This is why its a playtest and not a competitive game that should have an established meta. Most people's complaints are stemming from them wanting to play the next new esport rather than enjoying the game and contributing to the feedback process.
deadlock will be fine imo. It just has the issue of the hype falling off, and a ton of competition rn. Valve will get the data they need and I'm sure once the game is in a more stable state, the player count will come back naturally. What I really want is some sort of ult cooldown adjustment, so they feel less spammy and more important.
This game is dying it’s not going to jump up in player base with updates. Unfortunate cause I like deadlock but I don’t think it’ll be popular in the future
What's funny is that a lot of the fear about Deadlock's future stems from the fact that today's gamers simply aren't used to gaming companies showing them respect, being transparent about the development process, without trying to nickle and dime them at every turn. It's genuinely scaring people who aren't used to it, which I imagine are mostly younger gamers. Development is full of huge aches and pains, it's completely normal, and Valve is handling it this way to genuinely attempt to make the best game they possibly can, without asking people to whale MTX and pay subscription fees ("battle passes") for an incomplete product (which is what the vast majority of games these days do). Modern gamers see this as a frightening sign rather than "hey they're not trying to screw us over", which is crazy. Only reason I'm not currently playing Deadlock is PoE 2. Can't wait to get back into DL soon. It's clearly a GOATed game even as a playtest and people dooming about the player count don't know what they're talking about. Deadlock makes 99% of other competitive games look like an absolute joke. I haven't wanted to play a competitive game simply because it's FUN like this since CS 1.6, TF2, stuff like that. Valve knows they have something special, zero reason to worry.
I think they dropped the ball on not limiting play time, and I mean only allowing certain days/weeks of gameplay. I.e. Week 1 open for testing, closed week 2 and 3, and then week 4 open again with new changes. Without live service/more in depth updates, the game is strangling itself because people are treating it like it's fully released.
People are literally burning themselves out on a playtest, which could be a genuine issue on full release if you have a bunch of people who already feel like they've put in their hours.
never thought about that but yeah, I think you're right! I think the most fun i had with the game was when the matchmaking was time limited and I would come back from work and impatiently wait for the matchmaking to go live. Now i only want to play maybe 1-2 matches a week and I'm instantly bored.
@@sleepybinchwhile this may be true I think most average players arent interested in burning themselves out in a playtest that radically changes every 2 weeks. Alot of people left for marvel and poe2 and will come back when the game has figured out its base gameplay
their priority is probably to get the core of the game figured out, then start working on things that get players attention as the game is close to releasing, they already know that a lot of people are gonna come back to play it when its fully released so theyre probs not too worried right now
Right now, with how frequent patches are, it's pretty hard to be a semi-dedicated player. I take the game seriously, I've put in a couple hundred hours, but I still play with my friends. And when everyone jumps on Path of Exile 2 and Helldivers 2 and Hunt Showdown for a few weeks for their launch/update/whatever, then we look back and there's been 2 different patches in Deadlock that we have to adjust to, (and adjust to it more in a MOBA way than a FPS/TPS way with builds and item choices and skilling), it can be pretty rough. There's still a core group of us that play, but more fell off or are only playing cause we are. That said, when the game is in a 1.0 mode, with less frequent big patches and more content, I'm very confident they'd all come back, so I'm not worried in the long term. My only worry is with Valve how long that term is.
@@stedmanslick brother we've got jobs. If a game has 3 massive meta shifting updates in the same week three weeks back that we missed because we don't follow the dev forums it gets a little hard to follow. Like at this point I don't even know what's the soul share ratio right now
I posted the same complaint on reddit and people just bashed me lol. But the frequent meta shift from the balance patches is just too tedious to stay updated to. I know it's in alpha but they can literally just update the core gameplay and player experience without patching the items and heroes too often. I don't play 10 hours a day so it will take me days to limit test a new meta and get used to it and by the time I'm actually enjoying a meta, valve will just patch it out lol. It's honestly more fun to watch other people play the game than playing it. Monthly meta patches should be the norm with weekly game and quality of life updates only
@@stedmanslick I think it's good that they're patching a lot since this is an alpha test. But I when I'm looking to boot up the game, I'm doing it as a player, not a tester. And while it's fun getting new content in patches is cool, when it's a bunch of minor tweaks every 2 weeks, with even more hidden patches only in the dev forum even more frequently than that, it's just a lot to keep track of. And while that's fine when I'm playing the game all the time, the moment I step away for a bit to play other games or because work/life is busy, it makes coming back to it hard. And for the record, if Dota is anything to go off of, I don't think this will be an issue at all in the final release.
what’s causing me to “pause” on playing despite loving deadlock and even joining competitive teams was the removal of ranked and keeping the actual rank visible. this mixed in the crowd who do not care about winning with the crowd who are obsessed with getting to eternus. do one or the other, keep ranked OR totally remove the ranked tiers. my games got exponentially worse when they merged the queues
They obviously made this change when they had no other choice but to merge the matchmaking again due to the declining player base and growing match quality complaints. Otherwise, rank visibility point may be not necessarily relevant with the lowered number of players. I remember that back in July-August I used to play on the 2nd+ page of 'watch now' despite obviously being a shit player.
IMHO casual vs extra competitive grouping makes much more sense than ranked vs nonranked. Putting tryhards and casuals together makes overall better atmosphere
Just some Important Information I want to get out there on one of the players: The viscous in the video ,wonterwoed, is a toxic Smurf addict who terrorizes the newer players. But because the player base has shrunk so much and less new players are coming in… he’s stuck to his main and risen through the ranks but still occasionally terrorizes lower ranks. Just want to make sure that if you see him to start tilting him as revenge for all the poor players he terrorizes lol.
@@dylancrosby2451 No, you didn’t even bother to check did you? Look up “WontThatisWoed”,or it’s something similar, and all the games are on viscous. Honestly thank you for really spreading opinions with no thought on it except “He wrong Me right me say so”. I don’t mean to be rude but, come on.
@@dylancrosby2451 No, I’ve seen multiple of his Smurfs named with “woed”, “wonter” or other related stuff. I know it’s him because he uses the same viscous build every game, not even to like practice at a new hero.
@SigmaMalice thats crazy that you've said that and thought you sounded intelligent, you know its him because they use the same items? You do know that builds are either public or very easy to find, not to mention if he's using meta builds, then everyone knows about them. Bro actually thought he said something intelligent lmaoooo. Yes dude, he's using multiple different smurfs that happen to all be specifically in your rank lmaoooo
@@dylancrosby2451 Getting a bit aggressive now over comments now, pretty rude when you haven’t even experienced it mate. I’ve watched the matches, the way they play, the build path, the profile. Im not saying every game I have a Smurf in it but literally it’s a common occurrence because we must play at similar times. No need to get aggressive because I’m warning people about it.
I feel like deadlock is in the same state tf2 kind of was when it released that being the core mechanics are there and they are amazing but it will still need some major updates to truly flesh it out and become a gem of gaming
IMO as a terrible < 200 hr player, if Deadlock wants to help retention, they need an in-game feedback on how to win matches. Us newer players just don't know the opportunities to turn games around. Either mid-game like the voice lines on being too pushed out, or end of match analysis showing key events. Deadlock matches aren't enjoyable when you don't know what went wrong and it was just a death by a thousand cuts. Maybe it's a MOBA mentality that everyone needs to go through trial by fire, but it's not enjoyable, especially when there are other fast paced pick up games that have high stakes game turnarounds mechanics.
Yeah, trial by fire is a MOBA thing (and old school gaming thing) and IMHO it's the most enjoyable thing about it :D figuring out yourself what is strong and what might work and trying it out (rather than watching tutorials) is part of fun:) Needs to change the mentality a bit tho...
@@HotelMari0Maker IMHO it's not that hard. There is a lot of people who play strategies and similar genre's and want to try some FPS's but also can't stand FPS usually being too simple and lacking any depth and strategy
I started playing about a month ago and my first 10-15 games had a queue time of 30-60+ minutes. If I didn't love the first games I played I absolutely would have given up. I suspect many have stopped playing because of this.
Great video as always--thanks for making such solid content. One feeling I've been having about the game is that all the mid/late games feel so same-y. I think part of the reason is one of the ones you addressed, which is the small hero roster making every game have a way-too-familiar cast of characters. However, I think a point not talked about enough is build diversity and how it affects the roles and playstyles of each character. There are plenty of situational items, sure, but it generally feels like once you hit a certain soul threshold, most heroes end up with some sort of 60/40 split of damage/defense, or vice versa. (Hard supports exist, I know--I would love for supports to get even more "supportive" options in this regard) I think it would be interesting to allow players to build into a more niche role, rather than being a "slightly higher damage bruiser" vs a "slightly higher defense dps". I'd like to see itemization have more synergies with each other and trade-offs with other stats, like Glass Cannon reducing your HP. Or making higher tier green items have -%Damage while giving passives that make you tankier or apply more debuffs or something of that nature. Or higher tier purples giving you -%Gun Dmg but doing a better job at letting you live your spellcaster fantasy. Right now it feels like every hero kind of turns into a similarly-built wrecking ball of stats, regardless of whether you focus slightly more on Oranges/Greens/Purples. Finally, another (more outlandish) idea is to give each character 1 ability evolution per game to be used on an already max-upgraded ability that would alter the way they play. Like something that would substantially change the way the ability worked, rather than just a -Cooldown or a +Damage upgrade. Then a player would want to alter their playstyle around using their evolved ability most effectively. Just something to add more variance to the game as well as allow players to fill a more niche role within the team with their build/ability choices. My thoughts as an Ascendant player, so I'm aware that my takes aren't as informed as people at the highest level.
Id love to see the sandbox become more polished, there is so many item and spell interactions Id love to test but its so just awkward trying to do it by yourself
One big change around the time when the player count started really spiking (and probably a large cause of the spike besides it going public) was the change to invites. It used to be you needed an email to invite someone, which made it a lot more of a pain, and also I imagine would make getting invites from strangers a lot more weird.
I've seen the decreasing player numbers discussion happen in a lot of games and I think something that gets lost every time is that this kind of falloff happens with every game. Usually when the game is released (or in this case, "released") there's a lot of casual users playing to check out a new experience, who will over time get bored and move on to a new thing, eventually whittling down to the core players, who make up a minority at the start, but make up a majority after a couple months. I think that there are definitely things the game could do to reach a larger core audience, but I think a falloff like this is expected of any game,, 15k concurrent is still a huge playerbase and I think the player numbers will level out a bit more over the next few months.
Tl;dr people complain about the same thing they have for the last 20 years of gaming. Nothing here is new, or a serious issue. It is genuinely just a repeating cycle that will never end.
The reason I’ve been taking a break from Deadlock is some of the characters core mechanics feel super unfun or un-interactive until late into the game. While it’s partially a skill issue I’ll admit, going against a skilled Yamato or half decent Bebop just feels unfun. Even if I’m the better player, it feels like an uphill battle. There’s moments against a handful of characters that for sure make me go ‘this is my last game for the night win or lose’ and I feel like that’s what turns off me and my group often
Tbh If I'm dealing with a beepbop or any character with a painful debuff like that I just get debuff remover and use it just after he punch you cause then you get rid of the boom
Bepop is the most miserable character in the game to play against. I don't think I've ever seen a singular person say that they genuinely like fighting against a Bepop.
I've been finding that the early game can be so influential and finding a lot of enjoyment shutting down the more privileged characters before they run away and steal the game. Especially when a solo lane teammate dies I'll check in and ask "Are you good? Need a swap/gank?" And if they say yes I'll try my best to accommodate. I've been having some success with it. Just last night a Mirage was about to dominate a side lane so I swapped, worked my hardest to play from behind, and eventually got ahead in souls and shut him down which felt sooo good. Basically what I'm saying is, if you struggle early game, heck at any stage of the game, communicate what it is you are struggling with and communicate what kind of help you need. Communicate communicate communicate, the team with more voice communication has so much more advantage.
I find it absolutely appalling that they let themselves be bullied into releasing a ranked queue at all during a closed beta. For me the current situation where we can only play normals but we have to tryhard every single game because that's what every other player in the server expects of me, completely sucked the fun and soul out of the game. ATP the only thing I'm hoping for is they relax the hours on Hero Labs more in the future, but unless that happens my guess is I will not play this game anymore until release. (Even though I have 225 hours played since August while I work a full time day job).
The main thing for me would be selecting lane preference ahead of queue. Can't tell you how many games I've queued up with a duo, only to both end up in solo lanes miles apart. (Even while enabling the "with party" setting)
It's because based on whatever people were queuing at the time, in your area, around your rank, the game just happened to find you a match with 3 duos on a team, all with "With Party" preference. And so as a result, one of the duos just has to be split up. It sucks to have that happen, but lane is only 10mins or so, and you probably don't notice all the times when you get put into a duo lane with your partner, and another duo that is in your game got split up into the solos. Obviously the game wants to put you in lane together but the queue is complex and it can't always guarantee that, hence it being a preference.
NGL I was obsessed with this game when I got it. I put 200 hours on it extremely quickly and was constantly watching content and tournaments. After a couple months I always found myself wanting to play but never actually doing so until it hit the point where I don't play the game or think about it much now and I am not sure why because I put so much time into learning the game.
Deadlock as a new casual experience is so fun and fresh, but the more you get into it and the more competitive it gets the less fun the experience is. It’s just hard to play this game and not feel like you get sucked into a tryhard no life lifestyle just to keep up. I feel like rivals deals with this great, the casual experience is very fun and casual, the high level play is still there if you want but you can stay in the casual side of the game pretty easily without feeling forced into something super competitive
Most people don’t know about the law of large numbers, which is tied to probability and statistics. It can be applied through player count. Higher number of players = proper rank placement and balanced matches, and accurate hero data collection. This would especially help rank placement the most since the game seems to use the Guassian bell
Casual game mode(s) is what i want for 2025. I like the game, but the standard gamemode is just too sweaty for times when im tired and just want to shoot around. I've stopped playing but hope the players come back eventually.
I have roughly 500 hours, right now I've taken a break because the game is in a state that I really don't enjoy. I feel like the end game is just and endless spam of ultimates. Strategy is out of the window. They need to remove cool down reductions across the board so that the use of abilities actually is important.
I’ve really been enjoying Deadlock, but I do feel tired with it at times because of like you said the low hero count and thus many games feeling the same. Imagining Deadlock one day having a hero pool similar to Dota 2 is an amazing thought 😊
Hope you can keep on keeping on! Enjoy your takes and teachings. Anecdotal counterpoint to your thing about cosmetics and battle passes, the lack of those things actually has made deadlock much more engaging and fun for me personally. Not to say what you bring up is wrong, but maybe a game that pours its resources into the core isn’t so bad.
Really like your take on things and agree with what is needed for 2025. I think player numbers will be low until casual reward systems or the storylines are added. If you look at Dota 2 I think Crownfall is something that would be super good to keep players coming back.
Thanks for making this video. I have 400 hours in this game. It's just plain good. I love it. That being said, it desperately needs a large chunk of new heroes. Full stop, that's the biggest issue. The biweekly patches are generally just messing with balance which has generally been the least offensive issue (but clearly easiest to address). We don't know what they're doing behind the scenes but since we all got hooked into this at this point, it might be nice if they shared some kind of roadmap. I think they are going to just need to cook for a while and maybe one day there will be "the big patch" that brings everyone back. Until then, I do think the game and matchmaking are going to be in an increasingly rough state. It's just an unfortunate artifact of the game not being done.
I agree with all your points. Not worried about the game either and like you said after it's fully released I believe a lot of players will come back and Deadlock will be that game we all thought it could be. With that said, I think I might take your advice and give it a break. After they got rid of ranked and combined the que with normal mode players I haven't had a decent game in about 3 weeks. Went from challenging and competitive Ascendant/Eternus games to Phantom games that feel like a coin flip
Honestly I think skins should wait just because right now most characters don't even have their final models yet, and making skins for them might mean having to re-do every skin
To add to the list of wishes I have to say I’d love MORE MODES! Having a 3v3 - single lane like SMITE would be so sick. Or just having other weird game modes (faster souls gain, tons more guardians in each lane, etc) that play with different values to test what people like to play
i would love a smaller scale game mode, I really do not like how much time I need to dedicate to a match, particularly when I have much more fun in the laning phase
Yea I agree, unfortunately at the moment with the player base in the state that it’s in, queues would be even worse with more division in the game modes. I could see LTMs do well like the hero labs with certain times slots so we can funnel more players into those queues easily
This is for later in development, but something like a Deathmatch modes that retains all the mechanics (movement, souls and items) with creeps spawning (just with no lane and all about kills) would be a fun casual mode. In general there are lots of game modes they can explore with Deadlock
My biggest want is a "progressive eclipse" depending on map objectives. Starts with a full sun, and more and more of it gets covered by the moon based on each tower broken by the team with a tower lead. Maybe when the first patron phase goes down, the Total Eclipse begins, and when the Weakened Patron falls, the victorious patron projects their face onto the eclipse.
That sounds really cool. I understand Source 2 lightmaps are baked but I wonder if they could do any lighting changes to make the map look a bit more sinister as the match progresses too. Nothing major, maybe just a slight tint without sacrificing visibility. Regardless, I can't wait to see how they polish the game with fancy Source 2 stuff.
Player counts really do not matter until the game is actually out and polished. A lot of work still to be done but I feel like when everything is ironed out and there is a more concrete gameplay loop and competitive scene you will see those numbers come back and likely remain consistent like other valve games have. We still don't even have any cosmetics and the roster is still growing as well.
11:29 there's never any reason to play a game other than enjoying it. Games are meant to be enjoyed. Unless it's a profession and you make money out of it than what I say doesn't apply of course.
It’s funny how badly you misunderstood his point there… he is saying that unless you just endlessly enjoy the base experience the game offers then you will get bored as there is not much else it offers right now. He is not saying that you should play the game even if you don’t enjoy it 😐
@@onurmusicplaylist-f6r i think you're the one who misinterpreted my comment, which when you think of it. is hilarious considering your first statement xD
i do enjoy deadlock. its my first moba means.. i have no idea about mobas. but in my opinion.. the gun heros are so strong in late/end game.. and there are not enough counter items. if the enemy has haze, wraith and ivy.. late game is lost without any chance to win it... it needs a better matchmaking balance.
i think me and a lot of other people (100k all time peak, 20k 24 hour peak) are waiting for the game to be finished before we start taking an interest in its development.
I'll honestly never understand how checking the patch notes every other week is difficult. It takes half an hour or less once every two weeks to keep up with the major changes. If people don't want to do that, that's perfectly fine, but there's no reason to complain that it's hard to keep up with when you literally just have to read once every other week.
@@deftcg thats true, but do you play any games with friends that you are not really passionate about? I play CoD with friends AT LEAST once a week and the gun builds for that change every 3 or so weeks, yet I haven't looked at a patch note for that game in literally years because I don't care about the game lol. There's tons of players that fall into that same category as well for Deadlock, and I don't blame them.
@@dangdudedan8756 other alphas in constant development? It's just not hard, if you haven't hopped on in a week or two, see if there's a patch, takes 15 seconds to check, you can check while the game is loading the latest update lol. If there is a patch, you spend a few minutes reading it, people are just lazy and want to complain. In no world is it difficult, it's just not part of their normal routine
Idk how they would do it, but I would like to see new game modes. I love deadlock but sometimes I just really don’t have the energy to commit to playing a MOBA.
The ONLY reason the game has a declining player base is because you still need to be invited to play the game and its not the most obvious thing to setup. I have AT LEAST 4 friends whos invite was either bugged or they cant figure out how to join the game. If it was open, WAY more people would be playing. This is intentional from Valvles perspective, so theres literally nothing to worry about.
I highly doubt that its due to needing an invite since the game has steadily declined in players after the initial drop when the game was receiving major attention
@@Z3rgatul the difference between Deadlock and Dota 2 was that DOTA 1 EXISTED. As someone who played Dota 1 back in like literally 2004-2009'ish, Dota 2 had a MASSIVE player base before the game was even released and the community was already used to playing literally a modded game so adapting over to a dedicated client (even though it was in beta) was easy in comparison. You can't compare the two when 1 had a predecessor for 7+ years
Tbh i will take the positives of constant patches rather than many games who have characters or weapons be overpowered or underpowered for months… updates and change is amazing. But i do get how it can be tough when bouncing between a few games.
Thanks Deathy. So glad you’re the first to talk about player decline, not naming the video «Deadlock is dying?» or something like that. Shit like that actually can stop the game from growing, and increase the decline.Since potential new players keep seeing these kinda thumbnails and titles they won’t bother trying the game.
I really do think a lot of the players have simply left to play other games while it’s still in play test. With the launch of poe2, marvel rivals, etc a lot of people leave to not miss out on those since they aren’t missing much
I don't even care about the skill level or what league ur in but if the game puts someone with 200hrs in the same match as someone on their 5th game in their first moba it's super annoying
@@juillotine its more so a effort issue, with no incentive to perform well climbing out of lower ranks can be rough when your teammates are playing a different game from you
It’s in a very weird place. The game feels incredibly competitive making it difficult to play casually. MOBA’s in general are hard to play casually because getting dominated feels very bad. At the same time it’s hard to take the game seriously with how quickly and drastically they change abilities and items. It also feels incredibly far away from being released based on the lack of hero’s and no release schedule. Loved the game but there needs to be more clarity where the game is going. Finally as a Dynamo player watching them put Arcane Surge in the game and knowing it was going to lead to a nerf was tough. Increasing his ultimate cooldown makes the hero less fun to play and you just spend more time waiting for it to come off cooldown. They need to nerf what it does not make the gameplay less interactive.
I started playing deadlock with my friends who are heavily playing dota 2 and DL is my first MOBA, i mostly play cs. But the point is they quitted and said they will come back when theres a drafting system, i agree, they should add draft.
everytime i queue this game i get queued into london servers (im NA East) with 80 ping that sometimes spikes to 120 ping which simply makes this game unplayable for me , other than that this game has been the most fun i've had in a very long time and im excited to see what they have in store
11:00 This is a problem with many games with a small player base. There's a game called Beyond All Reason and of the recurring top 3 complaints given by the community, bad or unbalanced matchmaking is always in the top 3, always. We've talked about it a lot and a major reason is exactly what you said in the video; the matchmaking is unbalanced because we don't have a healthy number of players to balance it out, and as a result, players leave the game, making the matchmaking worse. It's a tough situation because nobody likes the "doom or gloom the game is dying" videos.
deadlock grabbed my attention like no other game in 11 years (last one was dota2). But i somewhat dropped it after 60 hours because of highlighted issues. Instability is the biggest one. Wi definitely come back, when game releases from playtest
Been playtesting since May. I almost feel like they shouldnt have announced it like they did. It felt super cool as this secret club or elephant in the room.
The only thing I want is ranked I started playing right when they got rid of it and I feel that drives away the grind and this is my perspective on any game. You can just play the game to play the game ig but there’s no drive to play and keep playing because there doesn’t seem like much of a reward.
personally i loved this game around the peak i still love the game i just returned to my old game after some of the glamour wore off. I think the game is really fun i still keep up with the competitive scene i just quit playing due to so many changes. I think in a bit i will be 100% ready to comeback i love it the characters are dope and can't wait to play viper in the real game
For me my interest died when competitive and casual were merged. I loved casual for just being able to chill and play, while in comp people would communicate and work together. Now it just feels like the worst of both worlds.
@enhboldotgonbaatar248 Asia servers atm have a lot of players that dont speak much english or at least choose not to, when every other game there's one of these guys that take this lack of english communication as a greenlight to say the most vile crap it gets pretty bad. Most people joke about it and its obv lighthearted teasing but some of these guys go HARD and they waaay too mad.
I greatly enjoyed Deadlock, but I have shelved it due to the terrible matchmaking experience with the imbalanced matching ending up with a stomp or get stomped system. In the end I felt like my time was wasted and I felt relieved once the match was over.
10:20 A lot of smurfs. Sometimes I lose a lobby since I get to face one. BAKA (with Japanese symbols at the end of his name) and X Dest1ny being ones I've encountered. Just so many people who like to stomp lower ranked lobbies. Ain't fair! :(
Deadlock is excellent imo, and I believe the game will continue to have a cult following, as all great valve games of yesteryear manage to do. 40 characters is a very unrealistic expectation for launch in a game like Deadlock, imo. I think perhaps you’ve underestimate the immense amount of variation that would be added if even just 12 new characters were introduced. Bans and picks are a must, hard agree there. It feels bad to lose off the computer’s draft, period. I liked the weekly rank updates, but a dedicated queue does make sense. Funnily enough I’ve had great matches since the change to remove the ranked queue, but I understated I’m in the minority. I hope if they being ranked back, it’s only during distinct queue times. Nerds should not be allowed to spam queue ranked all night, I desire the 2pm-5pm and 7pm-1am window, it was excellent. Solo queue only ranked felt great as well. Thanks for the video, though we disagree on some things, you are making very high quality content in this sphere!
Wow, great video with great points. I'm in no way a sweaty deadlock player, but I really have fun playing the game and striving to get better. If they implemented paid cosmetics, I would instantly spend my money. It kinda baffles me that they didn't capitalize off of 170k concurrent players with something along the lines of an "early adopter's" battlepass or something. I think player retention is very important in this stage of a game that is *essentially* "live service". My other top issue is obviously the matchmaking. Obviously I stated that I'm not sweaty, but I still vastly prefer a competitive experience over a casual one, and it doesn't rub me the right way when 9/10 games are complete stomps in one direction or the other. It honestly makes me feel like there's a bug in the matchmaking system's code at this point. Anyway, just wanted to give some input and say that this was a surprisingly well thought-out video in a huge clusterfuck of shitty deadlock content. Thanks for that. Keep it up.
I play like one game a week now, compared to 3-4 a day when ranked was a separate queue, but I still very much enjoy the game and the worldbuilding. I like to keep up with the game's lore, the patches, and I like watching the games, but I do want to wait until the game is in more stable spot before I commit more time to it. Valve has an odd way of releasing games and it may affect how they market or release Deadlock. Dota 2 was just released randomly one day despite being in beta for many years prior, and I don't even remember them making a big stink about it. However, Dota has the benefit of a large, steady player base. It's hard to know what Valve is going to do to bring players back to Deadlock, but I'm assuming we can trust Valve.
Amazing game. Had to leave it for a while because of the matchmaking. Proper matchmaking, more heroes and release it to the wild with good advertising, then we can play again.
Valve should've just put 1-2 heroes from labs to regular roster, and force them to balance that way. Cooking them in Hero Labs for too long makes regular match stale after a while. Also true balance won't be achieved that way because Hero Labs queue is filled with unbalanced heroes. I'd love for Valve to work together with modders to make custom skins for them just for this play testing period. Just testing how skin should work in Deadlock and how it would affect gameplay because this is MOBA in 3rd person shooter. Maybe they can let the community make custom heroes skin and put it in Workshop so then people can vote to put it in game just like CS2 weapon skins. It's easy for Valve to regain more player base. Just make some advertising material for the game or make a Valve sponsored tournament just like what happened to Dota 2 with TI1. At least the game should have around 15-20k player base daily consistently during thee play testing period. But I know why the content side kd things has been slowed down a bit. Most game developers at Valve are still busy working on HLX, and devs at Valve usually working on multiple stuff at the same time. Making balance changes is easy because it's just changing numbers or logic.
I think the biggest issue with the game is playerbase. It’s filled with league players that don’t have mechanical skills required to play this game at a high level and think it’s the moba they’re used to-the easiest of the existing mobas. The game is likely fun in Eternus but below that even into ascendant it’s just too much of a slog to deal with fairly low skilled players. Probably will make for a good game eventually if we can get fps players to give it a go
Is it crazy to suggest they maybe, instead of making more heroes, design skills to be more skill-tree like? So you can maybe modify your turrets, or have 5 skills but only choose 4 as your setup? Instead of adding more heroes that kinda does the same in a new way and so on.. Can be quite bland if they can't make some impressive new idea every single time.
Just like PUBG, it is hard to recover your player base once you lose trust. The momentum is dead for now so hopefully they drastically implement more changes and not slow and gradual
Game will be fine, people are forgetting this shit isn’t anywhere near done Imagine taking a pie out of the oven halfway through its cooking process, sure it’s technically edible but it’s not good
last point is the biggest one and all the doomers keep ignoring it: there's no competitive mode, there's no cosmetics and there's no battle passes. There's NO reason for people to keep playing and the devs are of course aware of that. When the game releases in 1.0 with more heroes, a competitive mode, skins to buy and something like a battle pass and hero progression system to grind for while the game is plastered all over the front page of Steam, the game's easily gonna reach a new peak and I think it has the potential to sustain a solid playerbase for years.
maybe I'm just getting old but imo the primary reason people wanna play a game should be that they like playing the damn game, everything you listed off there I'd place somewhere between fluff and actual cancer and overall just makes games worse. the day they add a battlepass, I'm uninstalling and never looking back
@@AximVidya I mean you feel how you feel but before battle passes getting content in gaming was becoming so atrociously expensive. Cosmetics were releasing for 20 bucks a pop. Guns and blueprints were pay to win and 10 bucks each. nowadays its all linked to a pass for 10 bucks. It keeps player retention and instead of having to spend hundreds of bucks for a set of cosmetics and items its just 10 bucks plus play the game you enjoy
@@AximVidya So you say that you want to play games purely to enjoy playing them...but you would also quit the game because of something that has nothing to do with playing the game...hmm ok Are you implying that a battlepass will make the game pay to win? How would it affect the game at all?
@@Zipped_in battlepasses are predatory by nature, they are designed using psychological tricks to farm you for more playtime than you would naturally give a game since I don't like being tricked and having my time wasted, if I see that shit, I'm out
I love the game but my problem is how bad the matchmaking has been, i just got a game where a teammate was 1 11 at 20 minutes, that made another teammate to be afk in base. And games like that are quite frequent, like almost 1 in 5 games i have one permanent afk teammate or enemy, it makes the experience so miserable
As a low MMR player the experience that me and the people I play with seems to be telling. It seems that whatever algorithm they use to sort players by skill SUCKS at the low end. Asking people in my games all end up with the same responses of games won by essentially smurfs thrown in with for-fun/low skill players. This combined with the MASSIVE balance swings the game has makes this game uniquely unfun to play over time. Dont get me wrong I love the game, hence why I still play and try to find fun things, it just is a very unfortunate state of affairs if your not already cracked.
My only hope for the eventual cosmetics is that they never do ability visual or sound changes, it only leads to issues down the road and the 'power creep' that happens with people trying to outdo each other will make the game a disaster for the senses.
I recently installed a lot of mods to enjoy the game more - bikinidicta etc. And then they installed the big patch and they all got removed. We need official skins and a proper BP like a lot. Also, speaking about the amount of heroes I believe DL official roaster is like 22 and it is moba like, and we have marvel rivals which is more Overwatch like and they have 33 heroes (and 20ish synergy skills) - I mean I get it, but we should have 60 heroes as a bare minimum, we are making a MOBA after all. (For me this amount should be like 100). The training is good, but it should be so much better. Look at the Dota 2 training videos, and deadlock even more complex than that. My biggest worry is that valve will just abandon the game as it has happened with Dota Overlords - they just forgot about it after first BP release, and now look at Riot how they treat their products, their Dota chess clone, still gets regularly updated.
They really are hurting themselves by not just releasing it in early access. By keeping it In (somewhat) close alpha it hurts the playercount so much. And they have to make clear that it's NOT really a MOBA in the sense of having to bother with thousands of items, etc. Lot of people I talked to about It never wanted to try it because they dont like MOBAs. While it has aspects of it, I don't think that should be the thing people think about first.
I can't for the life of me understand the, sincerely weird, mentality of "I mean it's aigh, but it would be better if they let me ban heroes" like, bruh? I mean I understand that with a cast of 40+ that would still mean you can't get rid of all the heroes that are troublesome to you in particular? But straight up rejecting the challenge is just weird to me.
Yeah I played other mobas so I'm not really excited for picking a hero first then having some one trick and an autistic tantrum and throw the game because "I stole his lash"
One problem I see is that I think the game needs more dedicated tanks, but out of the ones being worked on in hero lab, all the most polished heroes don't really fit the tank category. Really I think it's just Abrams and Moe who are the proper dedicated tanks. And yes there are other heroes who are tanky or can be built to have a brawlers level of durability (shiv for example) but having a shiv get targeted by the whole enemy team and an Abrams get target by the whole enemy team don't feel the same (unless the shiv is fed). I'm really excited for Calico, and I'm sure people are looking forward to the crackshot cowgirl, but I think a hero closer to the newest hero that got added, would be better for the roster.
Sidenote: As I was editing this video, I noticed I did not address a lot of people's request: to go full open beta. While I understand the sentiment (getting more players), I believe that all the other changes I would like are more important, because while going open beta would boost the playerbase short term, it would not maintain the playerbase any better - we would just witness a 2nd decline over weeks or months again.
They can go open beta once they have more heroes and a draft system IMO. Thanks for watching!
To be honest i dont see going open beta doing anything, its insanely easy to get keys as it is right now and almost anybody who WANTS to play the game can. Outside of the people who wont play simply because they need a key it would likely just be a small temporary player number boost. This is all assuming Valve doesnt go for a marketing push of some sort whe moving to an open beta, that could make a larger impact for sure.
One kinda related thing is people really underestimate how hard it is to make anyone stay in multiplayer game without any lootbox and reward system in place. I know it's hard for some to imagine or acknowledge, but players nowadays are way too addicted to this multiplayer games gambling stuff...
I'm not really a fan of that either, but I'm speaking as someone from gamedev about gaming normies.
And this is also not a system you want to deal with without finished game in this development state... I mean there are even whiteboxes :D
@@milansvancara I find it really surprising and a bit depressing that the majority of people seem to be more motivated by extrinsic rewards (shiny cosmetics and battle passes) than intrinsic rewards (the game is fun to play). I can't see any other explanation for the playerbase declining this much. For me cosmetics usually end up detracting from competitive games because it starts a flashiness arms race, which ends up making teamfights harder to read.
@@Bspammer Yup, I wholeheartedly agree, it's depressing, especially for us developers. We strive to avoid these but we are forced to compel to the overwhelming demand by players (even those who claim to not want it oftentimes end up indirectly complaining about it missing).
For example mobile game market is atm just pure gambling in different coats with little to no exceptions due to demand...
Open beta without the changes you mentioned would be a big stab to the heart of this game. Open beta should be paired with a big patch with new heroes, map changes, draft, new ranked/unranked queues, and maybe some new objectives on the map.
Personally, Deadlock has held my attention like no other game except maybe Team Fortress 2. I’ll be around as long as I can get games in and I hope the game as a whole succeeds.
I'm in exactly the same boat brother, I've been uninterested in video games since I was in comp tf2, figured I had just grown up. Deadlock comes out and im playing 30 hours a week again.
Same except I went from being an OW fan to only playing Deadlock now. Love the game and it has so much to it, more than any other PvP I have played in years.
Same here, i have +300h
yeah same. the gameplay loop is super satisfying
I love deadlock. It’s just has this balance to me that no other game has.
your first point is so real, keeping up with all the changes is kind of a nightmare if you aren't playing deadlock competitively every day. feels like by the time i understand the effects of a patch the next one is already there. been so hard to keep on top of itemization in particular that i just end up watching more than playing to save myself the headache lol.
i get where you're coming from, but it's not like they straight out delete items (unless it's being heavily abused and de-purposed like the self revive). Mostly it's smaller value changes, so that the items are all still viable, it's just that there might be another item which just had become *a little more efficient* than the one you were using previously, which is rare in itself, because for example i didn't really change my optimal builds for my chars since .. 1-2 months.
So you don't have to "always be optimal" with your build, there's many more factors than just the items and keeping up with their balancing
@@nergal2741economy changes are huge
This is why its a playtest and not a competitive game that should have an established meta. Most people's complaints are stemming from them wanting to play the next new esport rather than enjoying the game and contributing to the feedback process.
i legit just feel honored to be able to playtest such a enjoyable game, and deadlock is really the first game I've wanted to submerge myself within
same
deadlock will be fine imo. It just has the issue of the hype falling off, and a ton of competition rn. Valve will get the data they need and I'm sure once the game is in a more stable state, the player count will come back naturally. What I really want is some sort of ult cooldown adjustment, so they feel less spammy and more important.
This game is dying it’s not going to jump up in player base with updates. Unfortunate cause I like deadlock but I don’t think it’ll be popular in the future
@1ittt nah, it's an alpha. Once more heros and updates come out it'll pick back up. I've seen games recover from worse when they were already out lol
@@1ittt What a surprise, an actively in-dev game with no marketing and still invites only is dropping in playercount...
@@1ittt Why do you think that exactly? Generally curious.
@@user-tzzglsstle585e38 if you actually played the game you would know its not invite only anymore lol
What's funny is that a lot of the fear about Deadlock's future stems from the fact that today's gamers simply aren't used to gaming companies showing them respect, being transparent about the development process, without trying to nickle and dime them at every turn. It's genuinely scaring people who aren't used to it, which I imagine are mostly younger gamers.
Development is full of huge aches and pains, it's completely normal, and Valve is handling it this way to genuinely attempt to make the best game they possibly can, without asking people to whale MTX and pay subscription fees ("battle passes") for an incomplete product (which is what the vast majority of games these days do). Modern gamers see this as a frightening sign rather than "hey they're not trying to screw us over", which is crazy.
Only reason I'm not currently playing Deadlock is PoE 2. Can't wait to get back into DL soon. It's clearly a GOATed game even as a playtest and people dooming about the player count don't know what they're talking about. Deadlock makes 99% of other competitive games look like an absolute joke. I haven't wanted to play a competitive game simply because it's FUN like this since CS 1.6, TF2, stuff like that.
Valve knows they have something special, zero reason to worry.
I think they dropped the ball on not limiting play time, and I mean only allowing certain days/weeks of gameplay. I.e. Week 1 open for testing, closed week 2 and 3, and then week 4 open again with new changes. Without live service/more in depth updates, the game is strangling itself because people are treating it like it's fully released.
People are literally burning themselves out on a playtest, which could be a genuine issue on full release if you have a bunch of people who already feel like they've put in their hours.
never thought about that but yeah, I think you're right! I think the most fun i had with the game was when the matchmaking was time limited and I would come back from work and impatiently wait for the matchmaking to go live. Now i only want to play maybe 1-2 matches a week and I'm instantly bored.
@@sleepybinchwhile this may be true I think most average players arent interested in burning themselves out in a playtest that radically changes every 2 weeks. Alot of people left for marvel and poe2 and will come back when the game has figured out its base gameplay
Remember guys, I can dominate anyone of you in lane so get your practice.
their priority is probably to get the core of the game figured out, then start working on things that get players attention as the game is close to releasing, they already know that a lot of people are gonna come back to play it when its fully released so theyre probs not too worried right now
Right now, with how frequent patches are, it's pretty hard to be a semi-dedicated player. I take the game seriously, I've put in a couple hundred hours, but I still play with my friends. And when everyone jumps on Path of Exile 2 and Helldivers 2 and Hunt Showdown for a few weeks for their launch/update/whatever, then we look back and there's been 2 different patches in Deadlock that we have to adjust to, (and adjust to it more in a MOBA way than a FPS/TPS way with builds and item choices and skilling), it can be pretty rough. There's still a core group of us that play, but more fell off or are only playing cause we are. That said, when the game is in a 1.0 mode, with less frequent big patches and more content, I'm very confident they'd all come back, so I'm not worried in the long term. My only worry is with Valve how long that term is.
You the only dawg I know that complains of too many patches
@@stedmanslick brother we've got jobs. If a game has 3 massive meta shifting updates in the same week three weeks back that we missed because we don't follow the dev forums it gets a little hard to follow. Like at this point I don't even know what's the soul share ratio right now
I posted the same complaint on reddit and people just bashed me lol. But the frequent meta shift from the balance patches is just too tedious to stay updated to. I know it's in alpha but they can literally just update the core gameplay and player experience without patching the items and heroes too often.
I don't play 10 hours a day so it will take me days to limit test a new meta and get used to it and by the time I'm actually enjoying a meta, valve will just patch it out lol.
It's honestly more fun to watch other people play the game than playing it. Monthly meta patches should be the norm with weekly game and quality of life updates only
@@Intestine_Ballin-ismhahaha same. The soul sharing ratio and timings are so inconsistent that I just play like it wasn't changed at all lol
@@stedmanslick I think it's good that they're patching a lot since this is an alpha test. But I when I'm looking to boot up the game, I'm doing it as a player, not a tester. And while it's fun getting new content in patches is cool, when it's a bunch of minor tweaks every 2 weeks, with even more hidden patches only in the dev forum even more frequently than that, it's just a lot to keep track of. And while that's fine when I'm playing the game all the time, the moment I step away for a bit to play other games or because work/life is busy, it makes coming back to it hard.
And for the record, if Dota is anything to go off of, I don't think this will be an issue at all in the final release.
what’s causing me to “pause” on playing despite loving deadlock and even joining competitive teams was the removal of ranked and keeping the actual rank visible.
this mixed in the crowd who do not care about winning with the crowd who are obsessed with getting to eternus.
do one or the other, keep ranked OR totally remove the ranked tiers. my games got exponentially worse when they merged the queues
They obviously made this change when they had no other choice but to merge the matchmaking again due to the declining player base and growing match quality complaints.
Otherwise, rank visibility point may be not necessarily relevant with the lowered number of players. I remember that back in July-August I used to play on the 2nd+ page of 'watch now' despite obviously being a shit player.
yeah i dont understand it, like i dont have a problem waiting 1 minute more for matchmaking, let me play ranked
@@Emma_Z1 the thing is, its not 1 more minute. Its like 30 minutes at least 💀
They added the serious player que option, which let's you play with people who are trying to win.
IMHO casual vs extra competitive grouping makes much more sense than ranked vs nonranked.
Putting tryhards and casuals together makes overall better atmosphere
Just some Important Information I want to get out there on one of the players:
The viscous in the video
,wonterwoed, is a toxic Smurf addict who terrorizes the newer players.
But because the player base has shrunk so much and less new players are coming in… he’s stuck to his main and risen through the ranks but still occasionally terrorizes lower ranks.
Just want to make sure that if you see him to start tilting him as revenge for all the poor players he terrorizes lol.
Or... he was just building an alt account.... and that's why you don't see him anymore... because he ranked up his alt account...
@@dylancrosby2451 No, you didn’t even bother to check did you? Look up “WontThatisWoed”,or it’s something similar, and all the games are on viscous.
Honestly thank you for really spreading opinions with no thought on it except “He wrong Me right me say so”. I don’t mean to be rude but, come on.
@@dylancrosby2451 No, I’ve seen multiple of his Smurfs named with “woed”, “wonter” or other related stuff. I know it’s him because he uses the same viscous build every game, not even to like practice at a new hero.
@SigmaMalice thats crazy that you've said that and thought you sounded intelligent, you know its him because they use the same items? You do know that builds are either public or very easy to find, not to mention if he's using meta builds, then everyone knows about them. Bro actually thought he said something intelligent lmaoooo. Yes dude, he's using multiple different smurfs that happen to all be specifically in your rank lmaoooo
@@dylancrosby2451 Getting a bit aggressive now over comments now, pretty rude when you haven’t even experienced it mate.
I’ve watched the matches, the way they play, the build path, the profile. Im not saying every game I have a Smurf in it but literally it’s a common occurrence because we must play at similar times.
No need to get aggressive because I’m warning people about it.
I feel like deadlock is in the same state tf2 kind of was when it released that being the core mechanics are there and they are amazing but it will still need some major updates to truly flesh it out and become a gem of gaming
IMO as a terrible < 200 hr player, if Deadlock wants to help retention, they need an in-game feedback on how to win matches. Us newer players just don't know the opportunities to turn games around. Either mid-game like the voice lines on being too pushed out, or end of match analysis showing key events.
Deadlock matches aren't enjoyable when you don't know what went wrong and it was just a death by a thousand cuts. Maybe it's a MOBA mentality that everyone needs to go through trial by fire, but it's not enjoyable, especially when there are other fast paced pick up games that have high stakes game turnarounds mechanics.
Yeah, trial by fire is a MOBA thing (and old school gaming thing) and IMHO it's the most enjoyable thing about it :D figuring out yourself what is strong and what might work and trying it out (rather than watching tutorials) is part of fun:)
Needs to change the mentality a bit tho...
yeah as a new or newish player especially dropped in a solo lane, its easy to feel like you have 0 agency
I totally get what you’re saying. IMO Deadlock’s biggest uphill battle will be appealing to players who aren’t familiar with MOBAs.
@@HotelMari0Maker IMHO it's not that hard. There is a lot of people who play strategies and similar genre's and want to try some FPS's but also can't stand FPS usually being too simple and lacking any depth and strategy
@ those are both good points! my main concern is new players not being willing to get over the initial learning curve.
i like how you wanted an event with cosmetics and got it the next day
Just started playing this week, new players are still coming in for sure
I started playing about a month ago and my first 10-15 games had a queue time of 30-60+ minutes.
If I didn't love the first games I played I absolutely would have given up. I suspect many have stopped playing because of this.
Great video as always--thanks for making such solid content. One feeling I've been having about the game is that all the mid/late games feel so same-y. I think part of the reason is one of the ones you addressed, which is the small hero roster making every game have a way-too-familiar cast of characters. However, I think a point not talked about enough is build diversity and how it affects the roles and playstyles of each character. There are plenty of situational items, sure, but it generally feels like once you hit a certain soul threshold, most heroes end up with some sort of 60/40 split of damage/defense, or vice versa. (Hard supports exist, I know--I would love for supports to get even more "supportive" options in this regard)
I think it would be interesting to allow players to build into a more niche role, rather than being a "slightly higher damage bruiser" vs a "slightly higher defense dps". I'd like to see itemization have more synergies with each other and trade-offs with other stats, like Glass Cannon reducing your HP. Or making higher tier green items have -%Damage while giving passives that make you tankier or apply more debuffs or something of that nature. Or higher tier purples giving you -%Gun Dmg but doing a better job at letting you live your spellcaster fantasy. Right now it feels like every hero kind of turns into a similarly-built wrecking ball of stats, regardless of whether you focus slightly more on Oranges/Greens/Purples.
Finally, another (more outlandish) idea is to give each character 1 ability evolution per game to be used on an already max-upgraded ability that would alter the way they play. Like something that would substantially change the way the ability worked, rather than just a -Cooldown or a +Damage upgrade. Then a player would want to alter their playstyle around using their evolved ability most effectively. Just something to add more variance to the game as well as allow players to fill a more niche role within the team with their build/ability choices.
My thoughts as an Ascendant player, so I'm aware that my takes aren't as informed as people at the highest level.
I really hope they save “progression” for at least a beta launch
Id love to see the sandbox become more polished, there is so many item and spell interactions Id love to test but its so just awkward trying to do it by yourself
One big change around the time when the player count started really spiking (and probably a large cause of the spike besides it going public) was the change to invites. It used to be you needed an email to invite someone, which made it a lot more of a pain, and also I imagine would make getting invites from strangers a lot more weird.
I've seen the decreasing player numbers discussion happen in a lot of games and I think something that gets lost every time is that this kind of falloff happens with every game. Usually when the game is released (or in this case, "released") there's a lot of casual users playing to check out a new experience, who will over time get bored and move on to a new thing, eventually whittling down to the core players, who make up a minority at the start, but make up a majority after a couple months.
I think that there are definitely things the game could do to reach a larger core audience, but I think a falloff like this is expected of any game,, 15k concurrent is still a huge playerbase and I think the player numbers will level out a bit more over the next few months.
Tl;dr people complain about the same thing they have for the last 20 years of gaming. Nothing here is new, or a serious issue. It is genuinely just a repeating cycle that will never end.
The reason I’ve been taking a break from Deadlock is some of the characters core mechanics feel super unfun or un-interactive until late into the game. While it’s partially a skill issue I’ll admit, going against a skilled Yamato or half decent Bebop just feels unfun. Even if I’m the better player, it feels like an uphill battle. There’s moments against a handful of characters that for sure make me go ‘this is my last game for the night win or lose’ and I feel like that’s what turns off me and my group often
>describing a skill issue
yeah those damn game devs smh!
Tbh If I'm dealing with a beepbop or any character with a painful debuff like that I just get debuff remover and use it just after he punch you cause then you get rid of the boom
Bepop is the most miserable character in the game to play against. I don't think I've ever seen a singular person say that they genuinely like fighting against a Bepop.
@anusaukko6792Bebop is my favorite character to lane against.
I've been finding that the early game can be so influential and finding a lot of enjoyment shutting down the more privileged characters before they run away and steal the game. Especially when a solo lane teammate dies I'll check in and ask "Are you good? Need a swap/gank?" And if they say yes I'll try my best to accommodate. I've been having some success with it. Just last night a Mirage was about to dominate a side lane so I swapped, worked my hardest to play from behind, and eventually got ahead in souls and shut him down which felt sooo good.
Basically what I'm saying is, if you struggle early game, heck at any stage of the game, communicate what it is you are struggling with and communicate what kind of help you need. Communicate communicate communicate, the team with more voice communication has so much more advantage.
I find it absolutely appalling that they let themselves be bullied into releasing a ranked queue at all during a closed beta. For me the current situation where we can only play normals but we have to tryhard every single game because that's what every other player in the server expects of me, completely sucked the fun and soul out of the game. ATP the only thing I'm hoping for is they relax the hours on Hero Labs more in the future, but unless that happens my guess is I will not play this game anymore until release. (Even though I have 225 hours played since August while I work a full time day job).
The main thing for me would be selecting lane preference ahead of queue.
Can't tell you how many games I've queued up with a duo, only to both end up in solo lanes miles apart. (Even while enabling the "with party" setting)
because lanes are skill based brother
thats just bad luck because they try to group teams together so the two duo lanes are both duos or its one quad nothing you can do about it
It's because based on whatever people were queuing at the time, in your area, around your rank, the game just happened to find you a match with 3 duos on a team, all with "With Party" preference. And so as a result, one of the duos just has to be split up. It sucks to have that happen, but lane is only 10mins or so, and you probably don't notice all the times when you get put into a duo lane with your partner, and another duo that is in your game got split up into the solos. Obviously the game wants to put you in lane together but the queue is complex and it can't always guarantee that, hence it being a preference.
The game prioritizes starting and letting your sort it out over locking you out of queuing because you're the 3rd duo to select with party.
3 of my friends who have never played a moba love deadlock. We play every night. Game is gonna succeed.
you're right, I think releasing new heroes along with retention mechanics that would probably be it
NGL I was obsessed with this game when I got it. I put 200 hours on it extremely quickly and was constantly watching content and tournaments. After a couple months I always found myself wanting to play but never actually doing so until it hit the point where I don't play the game or think about it much now and I am not sure why because I put so much time into learning the game.
Deadlock as a new casual experience is so fun and fresh, but the more you get into it and the more competitive it gets the less fun the experience is. It’s just hard to play this game and not feel like you get sucked into a tryhard no life lifestyle just to keep up. I feel like rivals deals with this great, the casual experience is very fun and casual, the high level play is still there if you want but you can stay in the casual side of the game pretty easily without feeling forced into something super competitive
Most people don’t know about the law of large numbers, which is tied to probability and statistics. It can be applied through player count. Higher number of players = proper rank placement and balanced matches, and accurate hero data collection. This would especially help rank placement the most since the game seems to use the Guassian bell
Casual game mode(s) is what i want for 2025. I like the game, but the standard gamemode is just too sweaty for times when im tired and just want to shoot around. I've stopped playing but hope the players come back eventually.
I have roughly 500 hours, right now I've taken a break because the game is in a state that I really don't enjoy. I feel like the end game is just and endless spam of ultimates. Strategy is out of the window. They need to remove cool down reductions across the board so that the use of abilities actually is important.
I’ve really been enjoying Deadlock, but I do feel tired with it at times because of like you said the low hero count and thus many games feeling the same. Imagining Deadlock one day having a hero pool similar to Dota 2 is an amazing thought 😊
i remember a very similar video by a content creator for the finals. my take... great game no room for live service
Hope you can keep on keeping on! Enjoy your takes and teachings. Anecdotal counterpoint to your thing about cosmetics and battle passes, the lack of those things actually has made deadlock much more engaging and fun for me personally. Not to say what you bring up is wrong, but maybe a game that pours its resources into the core isn’t so bad.
Really like your take on things and agree with what is needed for 2025.
I think player numbers will be low until casual reward systems or the storylines are added.
If you look at Dota 2 I think Crownfall is something that would be super good to keep players coming back.
Thanks for making this video. I have 400 hours in this game. It's just plain good. I love it. That being said, it desperately needs a large chunk of new heroes. Full stop, that's the biggest issue. The biweekly patches are generally just messing with balance which has generally been the least offensive issue (but clearly easiest to address). We don't know what they're doing behind the scenes but since we all got hooked into this at this point, it might be nice if they shared some kind of roadmap. I think they are going to just need to cook for a while and maybe one day there will be "the big patch" that brings everyone back. Until then, I do think the game and matchmaking are going to be in an increasingly rough state. It's just an unfortunate artifact of the game not being done.
I agree with all your points. Not worried about the game either and like you said after it's fully released I believe a lot of players will come back and Deadlock will be that game we all thought it could be.
With that said, I think I might take your advice and give it a break. After they got rid of ranked and combined the que with normal mode players I haven't had a decent game in about 3 weeks. Went from challenging and competitive Ascendant/Eternus games to Phantom games that feel like a coin flip
Honestly I think skins should wait just because right now most characters don't even have their final models yet, and making skins for them might mean having to re-do every skin
To add to the list of wishes I have to say I’d love MORE MODES!
Having a 3v3 - single lane like SMITE would be so sick. Or just having other weird game modes (faster souls gain, tons more guardians in each lane, etc) that play with different values to test what people like to play
i would love a smaller scale game mode, I really do not like how much time I need to dedicate to a match, particularly when I have much more fun in the laning phase
Yea I agree, unfortunately at the moment with the player base in the state that it’s in, queues would be even worse with more division in the game modes. I could see LTMs do well like the hero labs with certain times slots so we can funnel more players into those queues easily
Maybe even a two lane map like twisted treeline.
This is for later in development, but something like a Deathmatch modes that retains all the mechanics (movement, souls and items) with creeps spawning (just with no lane and all about kills) would be a fun casual mode.
In general there are lots of game modes they can explore with Deadlock
My biggest want is a "progressive eclipse" depending on map objectives. Starts with a full sun, and more and more of it gets covered by the moon based on each tower broken by the team with a tower lead. Maybe when the first patron phase goes down, the Total Eclipse begins, and when the Weakened Patron falls, the victorious patron projects their face onto the eclipse.
wtf?
@@CaioMadureira-w6r what confused you?
cool idea, not an important one in this stage of the game's development though.
@@dizigned193 Okay and? That's for people who are better at the games development. I'm just saying what I personally really want to see.
That sounds really cool. I understand Source 2 lightmaps are baked but I wonder if they could do any lighting changes to make the map look a bit more sinister as the match progresses too. Nothing major, maybe just a slight tint without sacrificing visibility.
Regardless, I can't wait to see how they polish the game with fancy Source 2 stuff.
Player counts really do not matter until the game is actually out and polished. A lot of work still to be done but I feel like when everything is ironed out and there is a more concrete gameplay loop and competitive scene you will see those numbers come back and likely remain consistent like other valve games have. We still don't even have any cosmetics and the roster is still growing as well.
I've come from smite and destiny 2, deadlock isn't even close to being dead. Super excited for the games future.
Great game so far tbh ill be here if the players are here, I play this as my main game and as some have said its holding my attention.
11:29 there's never any reason to play a game other than enjoying it. Games are meant to be enjoyed. Unless it's a profession and you make money out of it than what I say doesn't apply of course.
It’s funny how badly you misunderstood his point there… he is saying that unless you just endlessly enjoy the base experience the game offers then you will get bored as there is not much else it offers right now. He is not saying that you should play the game even if you don’t enjoy it 😐
@@onurmusicplaylist-f6r i think you're the one who misinterpreted my comment, which when you think of it. is hilarious considering your first statement xD
@@YigitSonmezer it’s funny because at best your comment is just pointless and redundant and at worst it’s just fucking stupid…
Great video cant wait for deadlock to pop off
i do enjoy deadlock. its my first moba means.. i have no idea about mobas. but in my opinion.. the gun heros are so strong in late/end game..
and there are not enough counter items. if the enemy has haze, wraith and ivy.. late game is lost without any chance to win it... it needs a better matchmaking balance.
i think me and a lot of other people (100k all time peak, 20k 24 hour peak) are waiting for the game to be finished before we start taking an interest in its development.
I'll honestly never understand how checking the patch notes every other week is difficult.
It takes half an hour or less once every two weeks to keep up with the major changes.
If people don't want to do that, that's perfectly fine, but there's no reason to complain that it's hard to keep up with when you literally just have to read once every other week.
@@deftcg thats true, but do you play any games with friends that you are not really passionate about?
I play CoD with friends AT LEAST once a week and the gun builds for that change every 3 or so weeks, yet I haven't looked at a patch note for that game in literally years because I don't care about the game lol.
There's tons of players that fall into that same category as well for Deadlock, and I don't blame them.
im playing other games too.
@@dangdudedan8756 other alphas in constant development? It's just not hard, if you haven't hopped on in a week or two, see if there's a patch, takes 15 seconds to check, you can check while the game is loading the latest update lol.
If there is a patch, you spend a few minutes reading it, people are just lazy and want to complain. In no world is it difficult, it's just not part of their normal routine
Idk how they would do it, but I would like to see new game modes. I love deadlock but sometimes I just really don’t have the energy to commit to playing a MOBA.
Matchmaking has been absolutely horrendous for me the past few weeks with only a few days here and there that feel like I get good well-matched games.
The ONLY reason the game has a declining player base is because you still need to be invited to play the game and its not the most obvious thing to setup.
I have AT LEAST 4 friends whos invite was either bugged or they cant figure out how to join the game.
If it was open, WAY more people would be playing.
This is intentional from Valvles perspective, so theres literally nothing to worry about.
I highly doubt that its due to needing an invite since the game has steadily declined in players after the initial drop when the game was receiving major attention
check online history of dota, it was in invite only state for quite some time like deadlock
and online was growing all the time
@@Z3rgatul the difference between Deadlock and Dota 2 was that DOTA 1 EXISTED.
As someone who played Dota 1 back in like literally 2004-2009'ish, Dota 2 had a MASSIVE player base before the game was even released and the community was already used to playing literally a modded game so adapting over to a dedicated client (even though it was in beta) was easy in comparison.
You can't compare the two when 1 had a predecessor for 7+ years
Tbh i will take the positives of constant patches rather than many games who have characters or weapons be overpowered or underpowered for months… updates and change is amazing. But i do get how it can be tough when bouncing between a few games.
Thanks Deathy. So glad you’re the first to talk about player decline, not naming the video «Deadlock is dying?» or something like that.
Shit like that actually can stop the game from growing, and increase the decline.Since potential new players keep seeing these kinda thumbnails and titles they won’t bother trying the game.
Great stuff in this video in general/improper ranking in matchmaking. Christmas Dynamo is hilarious lol
I really enjoy this game and I hope it stays alive but it’s an effort to motivate my friends to play at the minute
I really do think a lot of the players have simply left to play other games while it’s still in play test. With the launch of poe2, marvel rivals, etc a lot of people leave to not miss out on those since they aren’t missing much
biggest issue is matchmaking, constantly feels like the teams are unbalanced
I don't even care about the skill level or what league ur in but if the game puts someone with 200hrs in the same match as someone on their 5th game in their first moba it's super annoying
@@juillotine its more so a effort issue, with no incentive to perform well climbing out of lower ranks can be rough when your teammates are playing a different game from you
I think even an art pass would be enough to attract people back.
The reason this isn't generally a thing to be concerned about is we are all voluntary pre alpha testers.
It’s in a very weird place. The game feels incredibly competitive making it difficult to play casually. MOBA’s in general are hard to play casually because getting dominated feels very bad.
At the same time it’s hard to take the game seriously with how quickly and drastically they change abilities and items. It also feels incredibly far away from being released based on the lack of hero’s and no release schedule.
Loved the game but there needs to be more clarity where the game is going.
Finally as a Dynamo player watching them put Arcane Surge in the game and knowing it was going to lead to a nerf was tough. Increasing his ultimate cooldown makes the hero less fun to play and you just spend more time waiting for it to come off cooldown. They need to nerf what it does not make the gameplay less interactive.
I started playing deadlock with my friends who are heavily playing dota 2 and DL is my first MOBA, i mostly play cs. But the point is they quitted and said they will come back when theres a drafting system, i agree, they should add draft.
Needs four more maps ASAP!
everytime i queue this game i get queued into london servers (im NA East) with 80 ping that sometimes spikes to 120 ping which simply makes this game unplayable for me , other than that this game has been the most fun i've had in a very long time and im excited to see what they have in store
I genuinely think the game was in a better state when the NDA dropped than it is right now
11:00 This is a problem with many games with a small player base. There's a game called Beyond All Reason and of the recurring top 3 complaints given by the community, bad or unbalanced matchmaking is always in the top 3, always. We've talked about it a lot and a major reason is exactly what you said in the video; the matchmaking is unbalanced because we don't have a healthy number of players to balance it out, and as a result, players leave the game, making the matchmaking worse. It's a tough situation because nobody likes the "doom or gloom the game is dying" videos.
deadlock grabbed my attention like no other game in 11 years (last one was dota2). But i somewhat dropped it after 60 hours because of highlighted issues. Instability is the biggest one. Wi definitely come back, when game releases from playtest
Cosmetics are already confirmed to be coming to deadlock.
Been playtesting since May. I almost feel like they shouldnt have announced it like they did. It felt super cool as this secret club or elephant in the room.
I would still play, but my friends all quit due to the change that doesn't allow us to queue up with more than 4, if the skill difference is too big.
The only thing I want is ranked I started playing right when they got rid of it and I feel that drives away the grind and this is my perspective on any game. You can just play the game to play the game ig but there’s no drive to play and keep playing because there doesn’t seem like much of a reward.
personally i loved this game around the peak i still love the game i just returned to my old game after some of the glamour wore off. I think the game is really fun i still keep up with the competitive scene i just quit playing due to so many changes. I think in a bit i will be 100% ready to comeback i love it the characters are dope and can't wait to play viper in the real game
For me my interest died when competitive and casual were merged. I loved casual for just being able to chill and play, while in comp people would communicate and work together. Now it just feels like the worst of both worlds.
I´m busy playing PoE2, but Deadlock is defo top priority on avg for me. It is so much fun!
Waiting times in south africa is 30min plus on average. I hope the number increase but also calling it quits for now.
Still waiting for this game to take action against griefers and racists, but with dwindling playerbase maybe thats not happening soon
racism is not big deal why people taking it seriously lmao
@enhboldotgonbaatar248 Asia servers atm have a lot of players that dont speak much english or at least choose not to, when every other game there's one of these guys that take this lack of english communication as a greenlight to say the most vile crap it gets pretty bad. Most people joke about it and its obv lighthearted teasing but some of these guys go HARD and they waaay too mad.
@@enhboldotgonbaatar248 ur cooked
I greatly enjoyed Deadlock, but I have shelved it due to the terrible matchmaking experience with the imbalanced matching ending up with a stomp or get stomped system. In the end I felt like my time was wasted and I felt relieved once the match was over.
Game is nice there is just not much to do. And i feared the playtest being up 24/7 this early will cause some issues
10:20 A lot of smurfs. Sometimes I lose a lobby since I get to face one. BAKA (with Japanese symbols at the end of his name) and X Dest1ny being ones I've encountered. Just so many people who like to stomp lower ranked lobbies. Ain't fair! :(
Deadlock is excellent imo, and I believe the game will continue to have a cult following, as all great valve games of yesteryear manage to do.
40 characters is a very unrealistic expectation for launch in a game like Deadlock, imo. I think perhaps you’ve underestimate the immense amount of variation that would be added if even just 12 new characters were introduced.
Bans and picks are a must, hard agree there. It feels bad to lose off the computer’s draft, period.
I liked the weekly rank updates, but a dedicated queue does make sense. Funnily enough I’ve had great matches since the change to remove the ranked queue, but I understated I’m in the minority. I hope if they being ranked back, it’s only during distinct queue times. Nerds should not be allowed to spam queue ranked all night, I desire the 2pm-5pm and 7pm-1am window, it was excellent. Solo queue only ranked felt great as well.
Thanks for the video, though we disagree on some things, you are making very high quality content in this sphere!
how do you always come so correct with these videos
Honestly I'd love a draft for ranked and keep the three-hero system for unranked
Wow, great video with great points. I'm in no way a sweaty deadlock player, but I really have fun playing the game and striving to get better. If they implemented paid cosmetics, I would instantly spend my money. It kinda baffles me that they didn't capitalize off of 170k concurrent players with something along the lines of an "early adopter's" battlepass or something. I think player retention is very important in this stage of a game that is *essentially* "live service". My other top issue is obviously the matchmaking. Obviously I stated that I'm not sweaty, but I still vastly prefer a competitive experience over a casual one, and it doesn't rub me the right way when 9/10 games are complete stomps in one direction or the other. It honestly makes me feel like there's a bug in the matchmaking system's code at this point. Anyway, just wanted to give some input and say that this was a surprisingly well thought-out video in a huge clusterfuck of shitty deadlock content. Thanks for that. Keep it up.
I play like one game a week now, compared to 3-4 a day when ranked was a separate queue, but I still very much enjoy the game and the worldbuilding. I like to keep up with the game's lore, the patches, and I like watching the games, but I do want to wait until the game is in more stable spot before I commit more time to it.
Valve has an odd way of releasing games and it may affect how they market or release Deadlock. Dota 2 was just released randomly one day despite being in beta for many years prior, and I don't even remember them making a big stink about it. However, Dota has the benefit of a large, steady player base. It's hard to know what Valve is going to do to bring players back to Deadlock, but I'm assuming we can trust Valve.
Amazing game. Had to leave it for a while because of the matchmaking. Proper matchmaking, more heroes and release it to the wild with good advertising, then we can play again.
Valve should've just put 1-2 heroes from labs to regular roster, and force them to balance that way.
Cooking them in Hero Labs for too long makes regular match stale after a while. Also true balance won't be achieved that way because Hero Labs queue is filled with unbalanced heroes.
I'd love for Valve to work together with modders to make custom skins for them just for this play testing period. Just testing how skin should work in Deadlock and how it would affect gameplay because this is MOBA in 3rd person shooter.
Maybe they can let the community make custom heroes skin and put it in Workshop so then people can vote to put it in game just like CS2 weapon skins.
It's easy for Valve to regain more player base. Just make some advertising material for the game or make a Valve sponsored tournament just like what happened to Dota 2 with TI1.
At least the game should have around 15-20k player base daily consistently during thee play testing period.
But I know why the content side kd things has been slowed down a bit. Most game developers at Valve are still busy working on HLX, and devs at Valve usually working on multiple stuff at the same time. Making balance changes is easy because it's just changing numbers or logic.
I think the biggest issue with the game is playerbase. It’s filled with league players that don’t have mechanical skills required to play this game at a high level and think it’s the moba they’re used to-the easiest of the existing mobas. The game is likely fun in Eternus but below that even into ascendant it’s just too much of a slog to deal with fairly low skilled players. Probably will make for a good game eventually if we can get fps players to give it a go
Is it crazy to suggest they maybe, instead of making more heroes, design skills to be more skill-tree like? So you can maybe modify your turrets, or have 5 skills but only choose 4 as your setup? Instead of adding more heroes that kinda does the same in a new way and so on.. Can be quite bland if they can't make some impressive new idea every single time.
Just like PUBG, it is hard to recover your player base once you lose trust. The momentum is dead for now so hopefully they drastically implement more changes and not slow and gradual
Game will be fine, people are forgetting this shit isn’t anywhere near done
Imagine taking a pie out of the oven halfway through its cooking process, sure it’s technically edible but it’s not good
last point is the biggest one and all the doomers keep ignoring it: there's no competitive mode, there's no cosmetics and there's no battle passes. There's NO reason for people to keep playing and the devs are of course aware of that. When the game releases in 1.0 with more heroes, a competitive mode, skins to buy and something like a battle pass and hero progression system to grind for while the game is plastered all over the front page of Steam, the game's easily gonna reach a new peak and I think it has the potential to sustain a solid playerbase for years.
maybe I'm just getting old but imo the primary reason people wanna play a game should be that they like playing the damn game, everything you listed off there I'd place somewhere between fluff and actual cancer and overall just makes games worse.
the day they add a battlepass, I'm uninstalling and never looking back
If you need skins to incentivize you to keep playing a game, ask yourself if you really like playing the game.
@@AximVidya I mean you feel how you feel but before battle passes getting content in gaming was becoming so atrociously expensive. Cosmetics were releasing for 20 bucks a pop. Guns and blueprints were pay to win and 10 bucks each. nowadays its all linked to a pass for 10 bucks. It keeps player retention and instead of having to spend hundreds of bucks for a set of cosmetics and items its just 10 bucks plus play the game you enjoy
@@AximVidya So you say that you want to play games purely to enjoy playing them...but you would also quit the game because of something that has nothing to do with playing the game...hmm ok
Are you implying that a battlepass will make the game pay to win? How would it affect the game at all?
@@Zipped_in battlepasses are predatory by nature, they are designed using psychological tricks to farm you for more playtime than you would naturally give a game
since I don't like being tricked and having my time wasted, if I see that shit, I'm out
I love the game but my problem is how bad the matchmaking has been, i just got a game where a teammate was 1 11 at 20 minutes, that made another teammate to be afk in base. And games like that are quite frequent, like almost 1 in 5 games i have one permanent afk teammate or enemy, it makes the experience so miserable
it takes so much time
to get a match
As a low MMR player the experience that me and the people I play with seems to be telling. It seems that whatever algorithm they use to sort players by skill SUCKS at the low end. Asking people in my games all end up with the same responses of games won by essentially smurfs thrown in with for-fun/low skill players. This combined with the MASSIVE balance swings the game has makes this game uniquely unfun to play over time.
Dont get me wrong I love the game, hence why I still play and try to find fun things, it just is a very unfortunate state of affairs if your not already cracked.
My only hope for the eventual cosmetics is that they never do ability visual or sound changes, it only leads to issues down the road and the 'power creep' that happens with people trying to outdo each other will make the game a disaster for the senses.
I recently installed a lot of mods to enjoy the game more - bikinidicta etc. And then they installed the big patch and they all got removed. We need official skins and a proper BP like a lot.
Also, speaking about the amount of heroes I believe DL official roaster is like 22 and it is moba like, and we have marvel rivals which is more Overwatch like and they have 33 heroes (and 20ish synergy skills) - I mean I get it, but we should have 60 heroes as a bare minimum, we are making a MOBA after all. (For me this amount should be like 100).
The training is good, but it should be so much better. Look at the Dota 2 training videos, and deadlock even more complex than that.
My biggest worry is that valve will just abandon the game as it has happened with Dota Overlords - they just forgot about it after first BP release, and now look at Riot how they treat their products, their Dota chess clone, still gets regularly updated.
They really are hurting themselves by not just releasing it in early access.
By keeping it In (somewhat) close alpha it hurts the playercount so much.
And they have to make clear that it's NOT really a MOBA in the sense of having to bother with thousands of items, etc.
Lot of people I talked to about It never wanted to try it because they dont like MOBAs.
While it has aspects of it, I don't think that should be the thing people think about first.
I can't for the life of me understand the, sincerely weird, mentality of "I mean it's aigh, but it would be better if they let me ban heroes" like, bruh?
I mean I understand that with a cast of 40+ that would still mean you can't get rid of all the heroes that are troublesome to you in particular? But straight up rejecting the challenge is just weird to me.
I like the random of three for casual, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if they added draft for ranked
Yeah I played other mobas so I'm not really excited for picking a hero first then having some one trick and an autistic tantrum and throw the game because "I stole his lash"
@@RadarFinsRIm autistic but yea I get what you mean
bro is playing against saxton hale
One problem I see is that I think the game needs more dedicated tanks, but out of the ones being worked on in hero lab, all the most polished heroes don't really fit the tank category. Really I think it's just Abrams and Moe who are the proper dedicated tanks. And yes there are other heroes who are tanky or can be built to have a brawlers level of durability (shiv for example) but having a shiv get targeted by the whole enemy team and an Abrams get target by the whole enemy team don't feel the same (unless the shiv is fed). I'm really excited for Calico, and I'm sure people are looking forward to the crackshot cowgirl, but I think a hero closer to the newest hero that got added, would be better for the roster.
Moe's not really a tank if you don't build him like one, shiv probably fits the tank role better than moe does.