I did not expect when I woke up to discover this game that has been in development for years. I especially did not expect no one here to have talked about it, but I guess I'm the one who will have.
The game in question is Deadlock, a 3rd person shooter moba being developed by Valve. Definitely not the kind of game many of us are looking for, but still in the vein of what many of us have played.
But how did I come across this game and give enough of a darn to bring it up here? It's no secret I'm not a big shooter player. Well, it turns out that this project is lead by some major names currently at Valve. Two of Risk of Rain's creators and one of TF2's creators would be enough to draw most of your attention, but what got me was that Icefrog, the man who made DotA the game it is on WC3 and at Valve, is among those names.
Gameplay wise, you could think of it as somewhere between Smite and Marvel Rivals. It's on a 3 lane moba map with neutral objectives sprinkled in between and creeps colliding down each lane, but then there's a lot of cover and verticality to the map for actual shooter gameplay.
I can't speak on the shooter elements, but it's definitely an improvement on a lot of moba elements.
To start, since Valve's making it, a lot of the amazing client features DotA 2 has are here, including player-written character guides, so you don't need to use your browser to find out how people are building characters.
Then there's the eternal discussion on last hits. Souls are Deadlocks gold/exp, and you get them from creeps, but when an enemy creep dies, all nearby players get souls from it, but then a little black soul floats up and out from the dead creep, which is up for contest from both sides, which is a neat way to include the denial mechanic in a way that makes thematic sense, isn't too punishing, and takes advantage of the fact it's a shooter.
Did I mention there's 6 players for 3 lanes? Yup, no more fighting over the solo lane or having a dedicated jungler, just throw 2 people in each lane and call it a day.
I dunno how much I can do it justice, so feel free to check it out. Apparently not only are there enough people playing right now for there to be a host of content creators for it, but it even has tournaments being run. After you've seen it for yourself, let me know what you think.
