Holy shit, I completely forgot this game even existed. Everybody was talking up a storm a few months ago over Valve making a good game and now it seems like nobody cares.

Ayo hol'up, it failed? I thought the extremely ugly yet adorable gargoyle was enough to attract waifufags and turn it into a somewhat niche game with their own playerbase that will keep it afloat even with some modest numbers because certainly Vulva didn't marketed enough to make it mainstream.

>>1104066 Turns out no one wanted a First Person ASSFAGGOT

For what it intends to be, it's actually, genuinely, very well done. An ASSFAGGOTS FPS game that has proper depth in both of ifs genres, has skill expression, has at least some charisma in the design, occult magic in the early 1900s is absolutely great, it's just the character design that feels a bit weird. But. This just leaves a worse aftertaste in the fact that this shows that they genuinely could have made TF3 and made it fucking great, too. Probably could have made us play with any of the teams from A to D in a new environment, with new weapons and classes and shit. They just didn't want to. Fucking icefrog is too much of a one-trick-pony, but at least he's actually making a game. With that being said, this game is doomed to fail. Modern gamers are allergic to this much skill expression, and from what I've seen with the majority of friends I played this with, most couldn't swallow the intense movement mechanics, coupled with aiming, and THEN also using active items and skills on top of it, not to mention the ASSFAGGOTS elements that I mentioned. This game actually has TOO MUCH skill expression for its own good, and too little flashiness with little effort. Normalfags will never like it just for that. It's the same reason arena shooters are dead.

>>1104066 Anyone who would have played a MOBA are already playing Dota or League. There's only room for two of those kinds of games. Valve is competing against themselves for some reason. Granted, making it an arena shooter probably wouldn't have helped, for the exact same reason I listed above, but it certainly would have helped.

>>1103957 >why Deadlock failed miserably >It's MOBA >Runs relatively badly considering the graphics >It needs online servers for bot training Valve could maybe save it by adding a "non moba" gamemode with maps. Also mod support.

>>1103957 >Deadlock failed miserably Nobody wanted it. Whatever players want, Valve does the opposite. I'm seriously convinced they listen to everything their communities say and then go "yeah lets do everything but that" >why they should made Team Fortress 3 instead Because people actually want it

i'd never play this even if the gameplay was good. those sweer baby inc designs are absolutely disgusting. people only defend that shit because valve's nane is stamped on it. if it was blizzard, ea, ubisoft etc you'd see much more negativity towards this shitheap

>>1103957 the Concord tier character designs and bootleg Overwatch art style didn't do it any favors.

>>1103957 The problem with this game is that it appeals to two different demographics. The older generation of gamers that enjoy MOBAs and the younger generation that enjoyer shooters. Now the actual execution of the game is pretty solid, at least from a movement shooter perspective but I think that the MOBA is pretty good too. The issue is that while it is appealing to different demographics combined it may have features that either camp dislike. MOBA people don't often enjoy shooters as much as the MOBA part and vice versa with the younger crowd. Also they're combining two extremes, knowledge, analysis + reaction and agility. Which means that you will be very exhausted after even a few matches. Add the element of random team mates potentially ruining your match (typical moba stuff) and you're simply overloading most average players thus pushing them away. It's a well designed game but it doesn't really appeal to most people. These competitive games need a huge playerbase otherwise you end up with a crowd of veterans that will absolutely chew up and spit out and newbies trying to break into what is already a complex game. Entering a death spiral. Which is what occurred. I don't think there is anything they can do to fix it, this game is simply not meant for the current market. Reminds me of other hybrids such as Natural Selection 2; a solid game that combines two genres but scares away most crowds due to the complexity and mesh of styles

>>1106608 >These competitive games need a huge playerbase otherwise you end up with a crowd of veterans that will absolutely chew up and spit out and newbies trying to break into what is already a complex game If this was entirely true in a vacuum, then how come CS, DOTA, LOL, or any of the shitty battle royale games keep a constant influx of new players? Because at their extremes, they're sweaty as fuck as well, the best player will win 100% of the game, especially with a large skill discrepancy. This is something that i always wondered about. I can never settle on a single answer, a single aspect, but one thing I'm sure is that it needs a lot of people playing, of all skill levels, but how the hell do you keep those players coming in? Those same players playing even though they're never improving? For reference, there's a ton of people with thousands of hours in league of legends that are hardstuck in BRONZE and IRON. This to me is BAFFLING. How can you spend more time in the game than 99% of the population in it, and STILL be worse than 90% of them as well? The game somehow needs to be fun while losing for losers to stay, but pretty much none of the examples I mentioned are fun when losing, quite the opposite in fact, so they must have something else that makes it worth it for bad people to keep playing... Is it social pressure? Grit? Keep in mind that whatever you use to explain how these games do it, it must be applicable to chess as well, which is why I always gravitate to self sustaining popularity through social means. Do you have any other ideas for how to retain bad players long enough for a game to never die?

>>1107402 >If this was entirely true in a vacuum, then how come CS, DOTA, LOL, or any of the shitty battle royale games keep a constant influx of new players? Because at their extremes, they're sweaty as fuck as well, the best player will win 100% of the game, especially with a large skill discrepancy. I'd go back to my point about the mental fatigue of the Deadlock. Yes CS,DOTA, LOL & Battle royales all require focus and skill but typically that's focused in a specific mechanical section. CS & Battle royales are shooters, you do good positioning and click on heads, have some map knowledge and you're doing alright. Battle royales tend to have more movement techniques. But generally they're more muscle memory and dexterity focused. DOTA & LOL are MOBAs, you have good game knowledge (most important part), map awareness and macro skills and you're doing alright. More knowledge and analysis focused. These skillsets are of course demanding things especially at higher levels. But they're focused on mechanics closely clustered. If you're good at shooting and have fast reaction time you can probably move around with bunny hopping or sliding since that's related to muscle memory. If you're good at remembering a lot of item stats and character abilities you can probably analyze them in a match in real time. Now Deadlock is a combination of all these things. You need positioning, being able to click on heads, have map knowledge, movement techniques, item knowledge, map awareness and macro overview. There is elevation, headshot damage, item spawns, bunny hopping, sliding, wall climbing, wall hopping and many more movement techniques to learn, itemization & keeping track of all players at the same time. It's a lot more cogs turning and more importantly different parts of the brain, muscle memory, regular memory, dexterity, focus & analysis. More than what an average game demands. Thus it's simply more exhausting to play than an average game. I've heard over and over from friends and people online how draining the game is to play for more than a few matches. You could easily divide Deadlock into two games, which is what it is. Then there would still be plenty of mechanics to explore for a casual or even a veteran. >This is something that i always wondered about. I can never settle on a single answer, a single aspect, but one thing I'm sure is that it needs a lot of people playing, of all skill levels, but how the hell do you keep those players coming in? Those same players playing even though they're never improving? For reference, there's a ton of people with thousands of hours in league of legends that are hardstuck in BRONZE and IRON. This to me is BAFFLING. How can you spend more time in the game than 99% of the population in it, and STILL be worse than 90% of them as well? People in general just wanna game for fun, for this they need something that's fairly compartmentalized in skill. The problem with deadlock is that it appeals to many different aspects at the same time and fewer people wanna exercise all those parts at once. You have to "switch gears" more often while playing. >The game somehow needs to be fun while losing for losers to stay, but pretty much none of the examples I mentioned are fun when losing, quite the opposite in fact, so they must have something else that makes it worth it for bad people to keep playing... Is it social pressure? Grit? This is done with skillbased matchmaking partially, and being team focused so you can have someone to blame. So usually these people lose and win the same amount while remaining stuck in their tier. Low skill players don't mind playing versus other low skill players. >Keep in mind that whatever you use to explain how these games do it, it must be applicable to chess as well, which is why I always gravitate to self sustaining popularity through social means. Do you have any other ideas for how to retain bad players long enough for a game to never die? In chess you mostly focus on knowledge & analysis, so in the sense it's a bit like a MOBA. I think quite a few chess players would enjoy MOBAs or Turn Based Strategy games but fewer of them would enjoy purely FPS games like CS:GO since relatively speaking the skillset required has little to do with knowledge & analysis. So if you make a hybrid game it will just be enjoyable only for a smaller population. The flipside is that for the few people it does appeal to it's very appealing. Chess has SBMM. >Do you have any other ideas for how to retain bad players long enough for a game to never die? Skillbased matchmaking does solve this to a certain extend. Though I'm not really a fan of SBMM for other reasons. For this you need a large pool so the gap between individual members in matches is smaller otherwise it turns into veterans bullying noobs. Not an original idea just wanted to add that dimension to it. Some games even mix in bots to have a punching bag. Tl;dr: People have different skillsets typically clustered in specific closely related areas. If you make a game that require a diverse amount of skills fewer people will enjoy it.

>>1103957 >failed miserably Is it right to say this while the game's in semi-closed alpha? The wave of mass public interest from mid last year has certainly faded, but the game still maintains ~12,000 during peak hours. For an alpha, that's quite good. It'd be more appropriate to stake this claim when the game releases proper and does similar numbers. As for why it 'failed', most either don't care for, or plain dislike, MOBAs and/or Deadlock's gameplay loop specifically, or choose to wait until full release instead of investing their time in a version of the game that's not entirely representative the final product. Since this game is Dota 2 with the Z axis, there's a hell of a learning curve too, so that'll dishearten casuals who probably see screenshots of gameplay and deduce Deadlock is a hero shooter. I don't believe they'll abandon Deadlock, also. They have a lot planned based on the presence of things like more heroes/items/gameplay elements being teased within patches, as well as side content like the greyed-out 'equipment'/'progression' tabs in each 'heroes' pages, voiced pre-match conversations between heroes, and full-on visual novels. If they're investing this much effort into the little details, they've got a roadmap and aren't going to cease development just because the test release's playercount dropped. >they should made Team Fortress 3 instead This, but not from modern Valve. Believe it or not, Valve has priorities and profit is a big one. When they learned how much bank can be made from e-sports, they went all-in on supporting Dota 2 and CS:GO to stimulate growth - both games offer little to no divergence between casual and competitive gameplay, and this eases new players into the competitive pipeline. They gave a half-arsed attempt at doing this with TF2 as well. It didn't work. TF2's vanilla gameplay is not competitively oriented. TF2 was released during a time when Valve could pump out multiplayer games without guarantees of roadmaps or future content and still get returns, giving room for experimentation. TF2's design ethic was, among other things, to keep engagements fun. Horseshit gameplay elements were thrown into the mix (random crits being the big one) to help noobs bridge the gap between themselves and sweatlords. 12-player teams minimize the pressure on individual players. A lot of unlockable weapons were half-baked ideas the devs decided to ship anyway because it was funny and/or interesting (looking at you, pre-nerf sandman. I miss you dearly). If modern Valve commited to making and releasing a TF3 (which is unlikely. Pretty much no one at Valve seems to care about Team Fortress right now. Most, if not all TF2 updates these days are from a contractor), it will include none of the above. You'll get 6 player teams (or 9 as well if they'd want a Highlander mode too), no crits/bullet spread, stock weapons + small pool of unlockable weapons that'll probably get balance changes every other patch, and a pool of 8-12 maps with at least 7 being payload. All of this will be handled by a matchmaking system with no user input beyond choosing your preferred matchmaking region. Basically everything they're doing with Deadlock right now is what they'd do with a TF3. Modern Valve believes if they design a multiplayer game to cater to casuals in any way, they'd risk alienating a chunk of the playerbase and the flow of e-sportsbux could be endangered. The fallout from Meet Your Match taught them this, so much so I think it traumatized them. Funny thing is, we'll never truly know if this would actually happen or not because of how hard Valve shat themselves with MYM. If they got their arses into gear and actively worked to make Competitive mode more than just a test run to gauge interest (despite fucking paywalling you before you can access queueing for a match. On an added note: they need to outright remove the Competitive pass from the Mann Co. store at this point since its impossible to find a match because no one queues anymore), we and Valve would have a real idea. TL;DR - It's too early to call whether or not Deadlock is kill. Assuming you're not baiting (bold assumption on my part, I know), you should wait for release. Also a TF3 in current year would appeal exclusively to compfags because modern Valve wants money from their investments and they're afraid to experiment like they used to. >>1103957

>>1103957 I mean id still be playing it if i could have kept my friends interested. Can't really say its failed as they still havent sold anything. The open beta was a cool thing to experience especially the hype of wild west invite only. I kinda like haveing some kind of progression on these kinds of games though. It helps buffer out bad matches when i see the end results screen and oh hey a hat drop, cool beans. The game could stand on its own but i feel like i experianced basically everything already. Balance changes arent going to make it a whole new experiance, a new map might.

>>1103957 How come Deadlock threads aren't instantly killed like Dota ones? >and why they should made Team Fortress 3 instead. Fuck off uncle dane, your channel is dying.

>>1103957 didn't rival marvels kill it? or are those two vidyas sufficiently different from one another?

all they really need to do is have better character designs and get rid of the godawful moba shit and you got urself a solid valve game cuz i really have never seen a game with an artstyle as fucking wasted as deadlock holy shit

>>1103957 >game failed >isn't even on a open beta

>>1115774 If valve put this game on the front page, and put those skinner boxes they put in their other games, deadlock would have 100,000+ players

As soon as I see a shooter has a bunch of those modern color coded status effects I tune out. You know the sort, blue glass break effect for shields breaking, green poison bubbles, red glow for buffs. I just don't want anything to do with that, they all play the same. It's always just some shooter you played years ago but now everyone has a bunch of unbalanced hero abilities. I don't want to die from poison dot in a shooter!

I just hated personally for the longest time that laning could snowball horrifically into a loss if you miss the first few waves or that you are a character that isn't great at securing souls. That and how ass it ran on Linux despite doing proton.

It's weird how laning feels both easier and harder than ever now that the flag creeps give basically infinite HP. I wonder how long they're gonna test that idea, given that they just ran back the soul duping before 8 minutes rule On a related matter, look at my ugly gargoyleoid wife (she's made of stone)

Pretty much what's already been said. It IS a good game, but it just just gives me zero incentive to want to play it. Every single character has seven gorillion different builds with bad feedback on what's actually good, every match is decided by who has the twitchiest retards snapping to heads since Valve cannot help themselves and keep adding "I ignore your overpowered ability with my own overpowered ability" on generic stat items so CC literally doesn't matter for shutting down "I finished farming and will kill you now" characters, and offensive stats tend to be really generic and uninteresting.

>>1107402 >If this was entirely true in a vacuum, then how come CS, DOTA, LOL, or any of the shitty battle royale games keep a constant influx of new players? Because for all of their faults, people complaining that Riot Games balances for pros and not the average player seem to ignore that most of the "bad" players are properly segregated into multiple, appropriate skill brackets, which gives new players somewhere to stand before they're playing against 3000 hour sweatlords.

Basically deep down the genre was extremely crowded beforehand. During it's development, Marvel Rivals released and this is coming off the massive superhero craze. Normalfags still love superheroes, even with the MCU being shit, mainly since Superheroes follows with a leader-follower mentality of a superhero being stronger than the average person. But this also has the fantasy of being a superhero, which marvel rivals indulges heavily, along with characters interacting with each other. Then there is Overwatch 2, which is in the shitter, but is very well known. Both of these games offer one thing: Mindless and skilless gameplay made to activate brain neurons and nothing more that carters to the lowest demographics. Deadlock is highly skill based, meaning you won't always enjoy the game when you play.

>>1130125 Just a random change they're throwing out there to test. From the two games I played last night before I went back to something else, I like the soul duping change on the 3-lane map, makes roaming more viable. They forgot to delete some Haze remodel assets from the patch, and there's references for a few others. With how long it's been since they added "content", feels like they could be pushing for an art pass update with open beta sometime this year. There's new Valve employees joining the forums every other day, and that's typical when they start moving towards a release.

The black woman of Valve unoriginality. These are TWO different characters.

>>1123782 >game hasn't even entered beta and people have already gotten bored of it Unironically yes.

>>1106608 To be fair I'd say what really held Natural Selection 2 back was being one of the worst optimised games I have ever played.

>>1103957 >tf3 >hats built in from the start oh wow. yes this is what we need right now.

>>1145823 >TF3 >it's a Counter-Strike 2-esque quasi-rerelease of the last game because Valve's scared of everyone's reaction to not having their precious hats

>>1130125 >tumblr furry style nose ring Pass. They can't even get me with furbait with this shitty game.

>>1130727 >Deadlock is highly skill based, meaning you won't always enjoy the game when you play. maybe these are the autistic demographic that spend the most

It got 14,000 co-current players today and it's not even officially out. I don't play Deadlock or any MOBA shit, but it's amusing how people uncritically accepted the OP's (who's also a (1) & done) premise.

The game is fun, but they need to bring out some more casual modes if they don't want it to die right after launch. Games that routinely go over the 40 minute mark are hell.

I watched a lot of footage of it being played by DOTA2 players with FPS skills. btw going forward are streamers taboo for discussion?

>>1146184 We're all just used to people shitposting with it at this point

>>1146184 the player count dropped from like 150k or something. plus valve has a horrible track record (artifact, underlords and whatever else i'm forgetting)

>>1103957 This game is significantly less fun since October. The "new" map and CSing changes are the most glaring issues, but the changes to items, guns, and abilities have really gone in an anti-fun direction as well, limiting player expression. Bringing back the self stop on ethereal shift was as a step in the right direction at least

>>1109383 >Now Deadlock is a combination of all these things. You need positioning, being able to click on heads, have map knowledge, movement techniques, item knowledge, map awareness and macro overview. There is elevation, headshot damage, item spawns, bunny hopping, sliding, wall climbing, wall hopping and many more movement techniques to learn, itemization & keeping track of all players at the same time. This is a natural progression for competitive gaming. Any older Zoomer should crave and be able to handle this

>>1146184 Normalfags and casuals will say this for every game that doesn't pull Cawadoody numbers. A lot of it is also driven by culture war bullshit which further confirms my belief these same people would call Half-Life 2 woke if it released today. That said I will also never play Deadlock because it's multiplayer slop, fuck multiplayer delete multiplayer.

>>1103957 It didn't fail, Valve wants you all to forget about this game for years. They fired the original staff and deeply regret every going public this early. When it finally releases it will be the most popular game out I guarantee it

>>1147220 >hey fired the original staff and deeply regret every going public this early. Uncle Dane was right

>>1147220 >>1147583 I'm into Valve leaker communities and I've never heard of this, unless proven otherwise I'm assuming this is /v/ lore.

>>1145900 She's a gargoyle, so it's actually a doorknocker.

A recent Rejuv steal I did

>>1148445 pls optimize your WebMs and cap the file size. They're nearly impossible to load on this site. a 17 second 720p video really should be under 10mb, you really dont need it to be 720 to begin with

I'm still really interested in it, but I don't have the time/energy I did in my degenerate Dota 2 highschool days. I want to give it another try when it gets more developed. That and the nerfs to Spirit items nerfed my scrub Lash

>>1145756 It's wild that like 10 years later they released a patch that removed an absolutely insane amount of input lag. I'm talking like going from mouse accel to raw input. Like holy shit, the balance broke since you can actually aim at the flying enemies now. Not that anyone would notice since it only has a playerbase of like 200 people now unfortunately.

>>1106608 >>1109383 Astute analysis. I agree with all of this, especially the "mental fatigue" associated with Deadlock. I love the idea of Deadlock: the fast, fluid movement, the character designs (mechanically and aesthetically), the breadth and depth of skill expression, the premise, the art direction, and the characteristic Valve touches like each character having audibly distinct footsteps... but I don't love playing Deadlock. It's exhausting. I have nothing to add, except that: 1.) I think MOBA players are repelled by active gameplay. 2.) Worse, I'm beginning to believe that MOBAs as a genre are fundamentally incompatible with active gameplay. 3.) Deadlock feels like it was born out of the casual:competitive dichotomy that was ultimately responsible for TF2's decline, and nothing about its alpha development suggests that Valve understands how severe this issue is.

>>1104138 >Anyone who would have played a MOBA are already playing Dota or League. incorrect, Dota filtered my friends with turnrate and we all fucking despise league now because of their disgusting practices and awful balance. Deadlock is simply superior to both in every way.

>>1145374 Was it ever confirmed if Haze's v2 model is her new design? Its still in the game files (pic rel) Fun fact - this model has fully modeled boobs beneath her top (no nip textures though)

>>1168480 >Was it ever confirmed if Haze's v2 model is her new design? that's her old model from the scrapped game, no it's not being used nor will it ever be used since nu-haze is objectively better and more well liked.

>>1167909 Can I have your friends? Mine are still League addicts.

>>1168480 >shoulders wider than hips It's over

>>1104109 Being held hostage in fifty minutes games with people I dislike is not a fun experience. Skill expression is irrelevant.

>>1158378 TF2's decline was the lack of updates and Valve's half-ass attempt at match making. I don't blame them, TF2 is filled with troons so I can understand why they distanced themselves from it.