Just curious what the demographic here is like. The game seems to be appealing, at least for now, to both crowds. I am an FPS player whereas my friend is a ex-MOBA player and we usually struggle to find games we can enjoy equally. So far we are playing Deadlock a lot together though, and I am more hooked than I expected to be when I first realised this was primarily a MOBA.
If you started playing this game for a different reason feel free to share as well.
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Started with fps in 93, then mobas in 04, love them both, still suck at both
I played Dota about a decade ago when I got a closed beta invitation but a few years later switched to just watching it. I have more fun watching Dota than playing it, but I do still like it. I also play a lot of shooters and action RPGs, plus a big grab bag of indie games.
I know in the popular conversation, everyone compares Deadlock to Smite or Paragon, but my view is that it’s a lot more like SMNC, which also leaned hard on third-person shooter combat like Deadlock while still having the prototypical MOBA setup. From this perspective, I find it kind of funny to hear people marvel that the TPS+MOBA gameplay concept is so fresh. I’m just thinking, “where were you a decade ago to play SMNC?” The biggest thing I miss about SMNC was the “sports on TV” theme. Super underrated aesthetic in gaming. I guess occult noir is, too.
It’s funny how Dota this game really is. Players come from outside Dota and go “whoa, this is so crazy,” but all the Dota players go “yeah, Dota has long had that.” In-game community build guides, the item design philosophy, the large amounts of disables. I was watching Dota streamers try the game for the first time and they get top souls despite still having to read tooltips.
The biggest thing I miss about SMNC was the “sports on TV” theme.
Have you played The Finals? That has a very similar theme. There was another FPS game in development called Combat Champions that also trying to do this but it was cancelled before ever making it to release.
Grew up with FPS games, but also have a few hundred hours on Dota 2. So far I find the movement much more intuitive than Dota ever was, and the community is far more good natured at this point as well. Loving it so far.
FPS. I actually haven’t liked a single MOBA before I tried Deadlock, I’ve always thought they were too punishing and needed tons of knowledge while combat was weirdly slow paced until the late game. Deadlock fixes these problems for me just by being always fun to play, and you can kind of get away with just following a popular build and shooting enemies without really understanding what you’re doing.
Well it is still a very new game so I think the fact that there are so many noobs and non-MOBA players is helping with that. But yeah, there are a lot of quality of life improvements and enjoyable mechanics front loaded into the experience so it doesn’t have that usual MOBA barrier of boring/wildly inefficient gameplay for beginners. You don’t need to have a lot of learning or in-game experience to have fun and feel like you know what is happening in a match.
The community build system was present in Dota 2, as well, but it’s been massively improved here.
And if you want to get into it, the fact that build creators can leave notes on each category, annotate each individual item, even, means there’s a way to start learning just by mousing over things and reading.
Both, actually.
I played Dota 2 a bunch back in the day, and struggled with FPS games. Eventually I got enough of Dota and moved onto other games, eventually finding my FPS home first with Tribes Ascend, then later with Titanfall 2. Tribes was when aiming and moving truly clicked for me and I started seeing results in terms of my skill improving.
From there, I found and adored Battleborn, somewhat enjoyed Overwatch, played a good bit of Apex with one friend…
Battleborn shutting down was horrible, but Deadlock has now realized the kind of game that is truly and completely “for me”. It implements a collection of mechanics that is just pure crack imo. The movement system especially is 😘👌 for my titanfall playing ass.
I’m similar as far as FPS games go. Titanfall 2 is a masterpiece, and I enjoyed Overwatch with some friends until the long series of baffling decisions from Blizzard that began slowly killing the game.
I never could get into MOBAs though. I played a handful of LOL, HOTS, and Smite games and it just felt like I either spent 30 minutes losing a game or won for a reason no one could comprehend.
Deadlock has been crack since I got my invite. It scratches the shooter itch, and found a way to make the MOBA mechanics more accessible to me.
Video game generalist
From fighting games (Tekken) and fps (Apex, Titanfall 2).
Didn’t know this game was a moba before booting it up (I have never liked mobas)😅
So yeah, I was a bit sceptical in the beginning. However, given that Deadlock was a completely new IP, and it having a 3rd person movement shooter aspect to it. I decided to give it a go.
I’m glad I did, because Deadlock has become one of my favourite games this year.
The game wasn’t on my radar either. I only played it because some of my old PlanetSide 2 outfit mates were running a 6v6 training night and invited me to join. They assured me I’d be fine because of my ability as an FPS player but they completely underestimated how little I knew about MOBAs (I didn’t even know this game was a MOBA, I have basically never played the genre previously because I find it so uninteresting).
I got absolutely destroyed and thought about uninstalling but decided to give it another week of play by myself and put some time into learning the basics. I’m really glad I did, it has been unexpectedly enjoyable and something really different. I am a large scale shooter (PlanetSide, Battlefield, etc) player primarily and the state of that sub-genre is absolutely dire, so it has been so revitalising to actually find something fun which also feels like it has a future.
Oh hey it’s the friend I play “some” Apex with.
