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.
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 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.
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.