I never liked MOBAs or hero shooters, but Deadlock has me hooked

So now that the veil is off Valve’s latest creation, I am happy to report that I’m a member of Deadlock-olics Anonymous, spending unreasonable hours on the servers just like in my teenage years.

But why? On the surface, this game really shouldn’t appeal to me the way it does.

Aimbotically challenged, heroically disinclined

Deadlock is a six-versus-six hero shooter with creeps and lanes like the MOBAs you know and love. In essence, all this should be disqualifying. My FPS indoctrination came in the era of bootleg copies and no internet access, single-player campaigns of games like Blood, SiN, and Half-Life, boldly save-scumming my way through each encounter and scurrying back for every health kit left behind.

Fast-forward 25 years and I still can’t hit the broad side of a skyscraper to save my life, and I would still lose any reflex-based competition to geriatric grannies and wooden figurines alike. So my enjoyment in shooters doesn’t really come from hard-fought victories and I’m always looking for ways to inject brains rather than brawns into any encounter. I’m the guy the Spy was made for in Team Fortress 2, and I’m one of those “never stop never flanking” idiots in Counter-Strike that piss you off so much—especially when I’m on your team.

Hero shooters and MOBAs both come with too much of a pointless package for me. The former makes me feel like I’m wielding artificially narrowed toolsets and battling obscene power spikes as I yearn for a more even playing field. The latter scares me away with the mountain of theory that gets bulldozed and rebuilt with every passing patch. If I’m in the mood to dive into encyclopedias’ worth of strategies, I stick to chess. At least there I don’t have to worry about a strat-breaking game update every few weeks.

What I’m trying to say here is that I really, really shouldn’t like Deadlock—and yet I do! And for this blissful period of limited access and low-stakes games, I’m not even that bad at it.

Deadlocked in: A great formula

The moment I got access to Deadlock a few weeks ago (courtesy of a colleague here at Dot Esports), I did exactly what you would expect from the above.

In retrospect, perhaps I was lucky I was playing in the off-hours when matchmaking was closed, as this forced me to mess around in easy PvE matches, exploring the basics of gameplay and the heroes on offer without getting shredded along the way by vicious, nasty human opponents. Based on my history with TF2’s Spy, you won’t be surprised to hear that I immediately tried Haze, and when I had little success or enjoyment with it, I honestly thought I wouldn’t find much for myself here.

But, you know, McGinnis was fine, and I enjoyed spamming the barrage. Warden was clearly strong but also clearly wasted on me. Eventually, I stumbled upon Lady Geist, and I found happiness and home. A strong AoE that can reliably take out early creeps, with a big helpful “IT WILL LAND HERE YOU MORON” blob? Health-draining ways to help me recover from terribly handled teamfights?

Oooooooooh yeah.

But the best part of the Deadlock experience is how I can still be helpful even when I’m objectively terrible. You’ll find me with double-digit deaths and falling slightly behind in the farm race, split-pushing with gleeful abandon and scoring opportunistic takedowns on Walkers and Guardians. I may feed our opponents to high heaven, but I claw back the difference with a handful of Spirit Urns and Shrine snipes.

This breadth and depth of engagement options make me appreciate what others might find appealing in MOBAs. Somehow, it all seems to work out: deadlocktracker.gg, in what must be a clerical error, lists me as a top two percent player per DLT rating. But really, that’s just the cherry on top.

Still, a caveat: I don’t expect any of this to last. As a chess player (and someone who enjoyed the early years of the digital CCG craze, but its late stage much less so), I’m partial to glacial gaming experiences where metagames are allowed to simmer and be solved, where a slow early uptake and a conservative attitude aren’t punished, and the knowledge accrued remains applicable for a long time. For now, the knowledge-gathering speed of this small community is not yet supercharged by third-party sites and a myriad of eyeballs, making this a slow oasis in gaming’s hyperfast desert.

I don’t expect “throw Essence Bombs in the vague direction of the opponents and split-push with decent timings” to remain a viable strat as we get closer to 1.0—but in the interim, I’m having an absolute blast with Deadlock.