It’s still very much a MOBA. If you were hoping for parts of that that are boring to be more exciting, they’re not. If you were hoping for parts that were difficult to learn to be easier to learn, they’re not. I personally have a hard time believing that, long-term, this will appeal to anyone that Dota doesn’t already appeal to.
I disagree. The perception of how the game is set up changes the more you play. At first you think it’s 75% MOBA and 25% shooter - mostly a MOBA. But the more you play the more you realise that that 25% shooter part is disproportionately important.
Deadlock adds an entire layer of complexity and skill on top of the MOBA: three-dimensional movement, mouse control, crosshair placement… The amount of movement tech alone is wild, and will be insanely important for high calibre play. It will appeal to an entirely different type of player.
If you say so. When I played it, it was still the laning phase for arguably too long and last hits to get anything done. It was still a fairly complicated item shop and an extensive list of characters that I need to understand before I get into a match in order to make any worthwhile decisions. It’s basically guaranteed that the list of items and characters will get longer as time goes on, which only makes it more daunting to jump into and try to catch up with. As someone who bounced off of MOBAs for a lot of these reasons, it’s not solving any problems for me. And the shooting component of it feels fine, but I’ll go back and play an actual shooter where it feels better.
I mean, yes. It’s a MOBA by Icefrog - it’s going to have complexity. Deadlock isn’t trying to appeal to players who are tangentially interested in MOBAs but find them daunting and complex. They are gunning for players who find the top-down view boring and slow and want the fluid, fast-paced action of a movement based shooter. It’s essentially combining the high skill ceiling of two genres that already each has incredibly high skill ceilings - and that alone I think is going to appeal to a lot of people.