Remember Battleborn? FPS MOBA from Gearbox that came out in like... 2018 or thereabouts. Never got off the ground and got completely shuttered in like, a year, iirc
That's kind of intentional and part of the design of MOBAs.
In the early game, this makes it difficult to get kills unless the enemy makes a mistake. You want players to have to choose between spending their time harassing their opposing player or farming minions.
Later on, the bullet sponge effect makes for longer, more interesting fights. That can end up, being not the case, though, if the economy is too one-sided. That's another reason for the bullet sponge design - to make the economy more important. That's how many souls you collect. Buying more means you're stronger with items and the fights are more in your favor.
So, essentially, the bullet sponge amplifies the more interesting/complex elements of the game. They wouldn't really be possible if you could just one-hit your opponent from base level.
Yup, don't care about it. Not my type of game. Also a genre with too many games as it is for the genre to really support, IMO.
It will have to be nearly perfect to pull people from other similar games. It needs to fix the issues the others have, at launch, or it will be dead on arrival.
Eh, there was definitely a couple years where the market was flooded, but at this point there really aren't any notable games in the genre other than League, Dota, and Smite. Deadlock being a third person game puts it in direct competition with Smite, though it's also got more shooter DNA, which is aiming to bring in the overwatch crowd refugees. And at least IMO it already feels better than Smite, or any of the other abortive attempts at a third person moba over the years.