Have you tried it? Genuine question, since we’re free to talk about it I’d love to hear why you think it’s mediocre, so far all the talk is always hype so I’m eager for some less positive takes.
I have 125hrs and it’s amazing fun, has a high skill ceiling, isn’t an overwatch clone or anything remotely like that game.
It’s a moba first third person shooter second. Basically dota with guns, or (a better) smite with a y axis (flying around, climbing, high spots, low spots) and guns.
I played a couple of matches and to me the match go for too long.
And I said:
maybe you’ll not like it.
If you like dota2 and LoL ok, if you like dota2 ok, if you like LoL and don’t like dota2(like most league players) I find really difficult to like deadlock.
I played league since s2 and a played some Dota2(+80hrish), the things that I don’t like in dota2 is present on deadlock, for example, like I said before, the length of the matches is too long for me.
I was low elo in dota2 and above average in league(diamond).
The data of the average match length in league is 30min in low elo and 25 in high elo, the dota2 high tier matches with 35min IS TOO LONG. In dota2 I played a lot of matches with +40min, without counting the time paused(I can’t even remember if the paused time is counted in the match time).
Besides in league we can forfeit a match and a lot of fuckup matches end with 20min, in dota2 this doesn’t happen.
The 5min-10min of length in average is a deal breaker for a lot of players. Most of people that I played league with give up on Dota 2 for this reason alone.
And that time is the average, if you people go play dota 2 and has 5 bad matches in a row with 40min without any means to leave that shit is the entire night thrown out.
Not only that for casual league matches is already too long, compare that with Overwatch that the average is below 20min.
Preface that it is an early alpha build and everything can change.
Yes, I have played it. It is literally just a moba. It feels like they took Dota and slapped 5% of an fps to it. The matches can be way too long, and it suffers from the snowballing effect that if you don’t get a good start, it is really hard to be effective. If you are 10 mins in a match and getting outplayed, you probably arent going to enjoy the remaining 20-30 mins. If you took Dota and modded it with 1st person controls, you’d be almost there with this game.
There is some good. The vertical elements do help, and the jungle aspects, along with destroyables, do help somewhat to make up lost ground in your build. The art design is pretty good for being alpha, and I do enjoy the map. There are lots of crisscross paths and hidden areas. There are also some map mechanics that are fresh, like 1 way viewable smoke screens.
If you don’t like mobas, I’d almost guarantee you won’t like this. It’s not a new, genre defining experience, and it doesn’t pull enough fps features to make it different. 4/10 as it sits.
Oh interesting, so it’s not at all like early Overwatch 1 which was way more FPS and was only compared to a MOBA because of the comparatively mild focus on abilities?
That’s both good and bad to hear, but yeah, sounds like overall it has a long long way to go.
I’ve only had the chance to play a handful of matches but I can echo those sentiments so far, I think. Another disclaimer though is that I’ve only played random matchmaking, not any premade stacks or squads.
The resource battle sets the gameplay experience apart from stuff like Overwatch or TF2 - and not really in a good way (so far). It does get very snowbally, but if it’s intended to be a team-oriented game like Dota it’s possible I’m not seeing all the intended catch-up mechanics. It does seem like whichever team gets the best start just wins on stats, which makes the quality of matchmaking impact your fun a LOT. Uneven teams lead to very boring matches. I’ve also run into the classic Dota problem of “finish plz” - where a dominant team farms kills outside your base instead of finishing the game.
All aspects of the game are clearly alpha though - and there is potential here. Like highlighted the map is great and I think the hero designs are good (both visually and mechanically). With both four abilities and four slots for active items the game looks to be making its niche complexity and high skill ceiling - much like Dota (unsurprising given Icefrog is designing this).
I also think the MOBA aspect of pushing and farming isn’t necessarily a bad concept as it does introduce a bunch of micro-objectives which drive player movements and create emergent gameplay. It just needs better balancing I think.
I think the thing everyone is forgetting is that valve isn’t stupid, there’s no way they didn’t realize you could work around accepting the (legally unenforcable) NDA, and it’s open invite.
Valve 100% knows that keeping it “secret” is good for hype and was expecting this to happen at any time, and the nominal ban was expected, but nobody is gonna get sued either.
More people are talking about Valve’s “secret” new game because of this than would be if they openly announced it.
Yeah exactly. It’s quite likely they didn’t really blacklist The Verge anyways, just won’t send them invites any more for this particular game. Best kind of marketing is hype marketing, and this is how you fuel the hype.
As someone whose played it I can say that it has some cool concepts but it’s sorta mid atm. It’s what to be expected for an alpha game though, I just hope they push the aethetic harder and not just use it as set dressing cause so far the aethetic is the most unique part about it. The rest is just overwatch meets leagueDota but slightly jankier (Again, to be expected since it’s alpha.)
Those are my thoughts as well, though I’ve only had the chance to play a couple of matches so far. When I heard about the concept it sounded cooler than it feels so far, but maybe I just need to get used to it. So far the gameplay loop hasn’t really clicked for me, and balancing the hero shooter aspects with MOBA stuff like farming and buying items hasn’t felt smooth, fluid or natural.
I do imagine - much like MOBAs - it’s more fun playing as a squad though. I’ve only done random matchmaking.
Dude glad it isn’t only me. The moba aspects slow it down but the shooter aspects speed it up and it hasn’t felt like a good mix so far. I know I’m the bad one so I can’t be too harsh but it felt like I was just getting one shot like in Call of duty but also I had to just grind resources like in mobas. My least favorite aspects of both games.
That’s sorta why I like overwatch, plenty of weps that aren’t guns and you don’t get one shot most of the time, especially if you aren’t playing a squish hero. No grinding either besides charging your ult, it’s more objective based which is fun.
I can see potential in the concept - needing to push and farm and take down neutrals or world bosses creates micro objectives and incentives for player movements and varied gameplay circumstances emerging from it. The shooter framing makes for a faster-paced style compared to Dota/League, and the ability and item system adds complexity and customization which increases the skill ceiling.
I think a big issue right now is balancing. The game is very snowbally and if there are catch-up mechanics in place I haven’t found them. So not losing the lanes is super important and whichever team builds a lead over the first couple of minutes tends to extend that into running the enemy team over. It also makes matchmaking and team skill gap a big problem (just like all MOBAs) since if you have a bad player they have a double negative effect: not contributing and feeding the enemies.
Apart from the aesthetic I do think the hero designs are pretty good (both in looks and gameplay) and the map has been pretty great - lots of traversal options and verticality.
I’ve had some decently fun matches today, but it’s a very uneven experience.
Agreed, heroes of the storm imo is a good example of a fun moba. League is my main game but hots is my love. In hots you don’t have to worry about last hitting things since there’s no gold to be earned just XP which you get by being in the vicinity of a minion or enemy death and each player doesn’t have individual XP it’s team XP. So even ‘bad’ players can contribute to the team by just being present, champs are also generally tankier than other mobas so unless you’re really caught in a bad position it’s usually possible to run and survive unless it’s a complete stomp and the enemy is way ahead but even then few heroes can truly one combo you.
I never played HotS but I played Dota 1&2 for many years. Recalibrating for Deadlock hasn’t been easy, despite being familiar with stuff like last hitting.
The farm thing is what stands out to me most, as you can’t really play passively if you feel like you’re outmatched skill-wise in Deadlock. In something like TF2 or Overwatch you can play more defensively if you feel disadvantaged, but here what will happen is you’ll fall so far behind on farm you’ll never be able to contribute.
The map feels too small and the pace too high, somehow, and 4 lanes seem too many. It’s been hard to feel like you can leave your lane and gank without opening too much of a vulnerability on your “home” lane. This exacerbates the problem of one lane getting stomped and that snowballing into an unstoppable victory.
It’s very possible all these problems diminish with good team play, though. This might be one of those games you can’t enjoy properly without organised team play and active voice comms.
As someone who hadn’t even heard about Monday Night Combat until you brought it up, I’d love your take on how they compare after you’ve gotten some games in. Looking it up they do seem to have overlaps.
Haven’t played it either but the other dudes points are real. They seem to be listening to the community though so it’s worth giving it a chance and speaking up, maybe you could steer it more toward the game you mentioned. Still alpha and they mentioned the gameplay could massively change, you never know.
For anyone reading this who wants an invite lemme know and I can shoot one over too.
Valve barely talks to press anyways, in a very similar fashion as Apple. At worst, maybe The Verge won’t get a Steam Deck 2 review unit ahead of time or something.
From my understanding users of the beta can then invite others to join as well, Valve isn’t necessarily directly choosing who has access. So if Valve didn’t send the invite themselves they wouldn’t know to specifically put someone under a more strict NDA or whatnot because they’re a journalist. Could they have done more to restrict all users from sharing information? Yes, since apparently you just have to hit escape to bypass the agreement pop up, and there’s no other sort of NDA or contract or w/e in place upon joining.
I’m just speculating, but I think they chose not to do that so people could openly get their friends playing with them instead of going through waves of sign ups and hoping to get in together, or otherwise risk people losing interest when they can only play with randos. I could also see a line of thinking where you assume people want to talk about the game, so let them bring others in to play with them and that gives them someone to talk to about it too instead of just spilling the beans for randos on the internet.
Valve fucked up but the Verge still broke the social contract regardless of whether they’re legally in the clear or not.
Doing something just because “it’s legal” doesn’t make it a moral justification. My wife and I have a joint bank account. It is legal for me to take money from it and gamble it all away, the gate is “open” but that doesn’t make it morally justifiable.
Meh, I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with what he did. What he did wasn’t just legal, it’s literally his job. The only issue is that Valve is now angry at him for their own failing.
To continue the same analogy, they didn’t just leave the gate open, they literally invited a bunch of people and told them to invite other people. I’m not sure what they expected if not this exact situation.
Valve isn’t really angry as far as I can tell, or have heard. They’re about as angry as any other person which goes and posts this stuff online: revoking access. If Valve wanted to expand their testing userbase without people leaking it online, they would have sought NDAs and other legally-binding agreements with testers and - by extension - journalists who can test the game.
So apparently they had a bit asking players to not share info about the game, but you could technically back out of it without agreeing so legally they can post whatever they want. It feels like a case of “this is legal to do but maybe kinda shitty and valve might be upset”. Basically the agreement was informal and not enforceable and the verge just said fuck it. They did get banned afterwards, but I think that and not working with them in the future is all valve can do.
Edit: didn’t even require agreement, so honestly it’s kinda fair game. I was a bit hostile calling it shitty, I felt like it was a loophole or something but it’s more Valve just saying “hey pls don’t” and the verge replying “no thanks”, and eating the game ban since that’s all valve can really do.
This isn’t some grand conspiracy it’s a closed beta for a video game. It’s pretty normal to have an NDA or embargo agreement to get access. It sounds like valve just goofed the implementation. So yeah it’s totally legal for them to post it, valve just might avoid giving them early copies in the future.
Polygon is Vox’s gaming site and I imagine the shitlist will extend to all Vox properties. So the editors at Polygon now have another department to blame for their woes.
There is no NDA for Deadlock, and anyone in it can invite anyone they want, as often as they want. It’s not like Valve has no idea how to privately test their game. I think they made these decisions deliberately.
A bit of the eula says not to share info about the game, but you can literally back out without accepting the eula, and still play. So I don’t know if I’d call it intentional, but there’s definitely no legal reason they can’t post whatever they want. They just got banned for it and might have damaged their relationship with valve somewhat. Depends on how much valve cares tho.
Edit: it wasnt even a eula apparently, just a “pls dont tell people ok?” Pop up. Thanks to the folks clarifying <3
Don’t know why you’re getting crushed for this. It’s not even just about this particular game; one of the major players in the largest entertainment industry on the planet is doing something highly unusual. That’s in the public interest.
Lemmy users should know better, too, as The Verge was one of the leading reporting outlets on what happened on Reddit last year. Adversarial tech journalism is part of what they do.
Yeah that’s a fair point. I was mistaken thinking it was an actual eula they bypassed because valve didn’t make it so you couldn’t just close it, but it’s not in any way legally enforceable. I thought at least it was one of those grey “technically correct but obviously an unintended loophole” kind of things, but they literally just said “pls don’t tell”. I’m mostly thinking that risking the connections you might have to valve aren’t worth a scoop on a game still in what seems to be alpha or closed beta, but if I were valve I really don’t think they can be that mad, everything the verge did was basically fair game if they were fine with a game ban.
I guess when I think of public interest I think of stuff like reddit selling user data without consent, or games using manipulative tactics. It’s hard to feel like it makes sense to be aggressive with something as benign as “game we don’t know much about yet, smells of dota/moba” But then again I’m not a game journalist, and I stand corrected.
There isn’t even an informal agreement. It simply says not to share anything. Not even “by playing this, you agree not to share anything”. It’s just “please don’t share anything”.
Yeah, gaylord_fartmaster let me know. I thought the message was one of those “scroll down and click agree on this eula” things but its just a pop up box, so it’s def not enforceable.
Nobody is saying it’s enforceable. It’s just a shitty thing to do when someone shows you something in confidence, asks not to share it, and you publish an entire news article about it. It’s just a dick move. Obviously nothing illegal about it.
Bullshit. The actual reason will be that this is far better marketing once you’re at a level of Valve. Shit gets leaked anyways, might as well make it intentionally so to fuel the hype cycle.
NICE, which Windows are you using bro? I’m running 10 with a stock kernel and GUI, as well as a bunch of custom modifications, including a custom desktop*.
Not the guy toy responded but I can give my experience.
The first annoyance was downgrading Fallout 4. Now I know there’s a mod that can do it for you but I’m not going to stick my Steam credentials in some random piece of code. So I did it manually which wasn’t hard but it was annoying.
The second burden was getting F4se to run because for whatever reason I couldn’t launch FO4 without downgrading to wine 8.0.x. Luckily I found out glorious eggroll version of wine works with FO4 and actually starts F4se automatically.
But by far the biggest hurdle was the actual installation of Folon. I couldn’t get the installer to install the mod. I ended up unpacking the installer and manually copying the files into the FO4 folder.
Then I got the train bug and manually installed buffout. Then I got an XDI error so I had to manually reinstall XDI as well.
Well, you can check the scripts of the tool yourself. They’re all in the zip file you download from nexus. It just sends the credentials to the Steam API and uses the auth token for the rest. That’s exactly what the Steam app on Android does. And it’s also not some tool from a random dude, it’s the official downgrader tool from the FOLON team. They even link it on their homepage. I get being paranoid with credentials, but in this case i saw no problem. Sorry for my rambling, but this “issue” is blown way out of proportion imo.
It’s deck specific, but the deck just runs arch. The only difference from the guide was that i didn’t used the gui .exe and just ran the .sh script in Konsole.
That’s actually something i still have trouble with and i’m hit withe the “No Female” bug. Gonna try your suggestion for F4SE bug. I’m currently installing the recommended mods which are suggested in the downgrader tool.
Edit// installed GE-Proton 9-11 and it runs with F4SE, so thank you :)
Well, you can check the scripts of the tool yourself. They’re all in the zip file you download from nexus. It just sends the credentials to the Steam API and uses the auth token for the rest. That’s exactly what the Steam app on Android does. And it’s also not some tool from a random dude, it’s the official downgrader tool from the FOLON team. They even link it on their homepage. I get being paranoid with credentials, but in this case i saw no problem. Sorry for my rambling, but this “issue” is blown way out of proportion imo.
Ah, I didn’t think about who made it. I just saw two options, either I go through the code to make sure it’s nothing sus or I do it manually and because I didn’t feel like going through code I did it manually. Should’ve paid more attention I guess.
As for the guide, I haven’t tried the Heroic launcher. I generally use Lutris but I will try that when the big patch comes out. Hopefully they also upgrade to a newer version of Fo4 because the ultrawidescreen mod is having some issues.
Yeah, a lot of people are missing who made the tool.
I can just speak as a deck owner because i’m not at home till october, but heroic saves a lot of headache. Combined with SteamTinkerTools is was really easy to set up everything.
Do you use the UWS-Mod they mention on the downgrader tool Nexuspage?
First issue was the downgrade failing to run because it claimed I was missing an ssh library. Then I found a work around that involved grabbing the uncompiled source and running the script from there, but that failed to connect to steam. I finally downgraded using a manual method that took forever, but it worked. Once I finally got it all running, I hit the infamous crash after the train ride bug.
I haven’t even been able to get it work using Nexus mods with my Steam version. I’m getting the intro screen/menu, but it never actually loads a new game after that. I’ll just wait a few months/years til I remember about it and try again.
Not really. Most large story DLCs for any Bethesda game require all expansions. I suspect it’s for assets, but I would also just pick the largest use case (and already owning the expansions most certainly is the largest use case) and say it’s a requirement also, so I’m not chasing down edge cases for people all day. Just the rough math of releasing something you have to support afterwards.
Especially new assets and scripting that DLCs provide. You’d be a fool to try make something as expensive as this mod without utilizing every available resource.
forbes.com
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