I had a grand old time with Valve’s MOBA, Deadlock, when I first took it for a spin back in August of last year. And then, because I am a person with a job, social obligations, bills, and—most importantly, two MMOs I’m currently playing—I dropped off.
Well, given the six new heroes that dropped into the game, I thought ‘hey, might as well see what’s different’. The answer is a lot. A lot’s different, and it’s well worth picking up Deadlock if you’re any kind of curious, because these last few months of updates have changed the game in some big ways.
First, the map rework update, which dropped back in February. This one’s by far the most revolutionary, not just shifting the map itself around, but also changing up a few of the core rules to up the game’s tempo.
The biggest change is that troops—the little candle-head guys in your lane—no longer need to be “last hit” to gain souls. They still drop soul orbs, which you can either confirm or deny. Otherwise, you’ll gain farm just by being in the lane.
This change bumps up the tempo of the early game considerably, and makes the late game less of a hassle—with the added benefit of lowering the skill ceiling slightly for new players. If your enemy knows what they’re doing, they can still snatch your souls out from under you, but making the game a smidge more approachable is a welcome change.
This also means that during laning, you have more time to take nips at your enemy, reducing the mental load of balancing last-hits with damage and instead making it all about denying them, pushing the wave, and other things that’re ultimately far more engaging.
And when you’re pushing late-game waves, not having to worry about dropping farm because you weren’t last-hitting is a blessing. There are also three lanes, now, instead of four, bringing heroes closer together, which means more action, more often.
Then there was the shop update in May, making buying items way easier, adding a ton of new items, rebalancing old ones, better artwork, and a ‘quick buy’ option, which lets you put items on a list to auto-buy the next time you nip by a shop. It also added a new base design and tinkered with the map some more.
Lastly, the Six New Heroes patch, which has slowly been drip-feeding players six new heroes (it’s a pretty self-explanatory name) over the course of a couple of weeks. While all of these guys are great—the portal-spawning Doorman especially—the update is misleading, because it also included a visual overhaul to the map (it’s darker, now) and swapped out the main menu for a hideout.
This place is great; instead of having to load up a different zone to futz about with your abilities, you can select a hero to run around with and are provided training dummies to see how your buttons work alongside a cute little soul orb aim-trainer. You’re also given adorably decorated vignettes to access various, previously menu-driven functions: A reading nook for tutorials, a movie room for watching matches, and a little shop to… well, buy items for testing.
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In summary, if you’re anything like me, and you let Deadlock start collecting dust in your Steam library after a few dozen hours, I’d highly recommend coming back; it’s all very different.
Valve has spent this past year tinkering with its map to encourage constant teamfighting, risky dives into your enemy’s concrete jungle to nick their farm, and tons of nooks and crannies in its map—which has both vertical rooftops to skulk over and tunnels to slink through—all the more interesting to romp around in. I look forward to losing more of my ever-vanishing free time.
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