Exciting times ahead for Valve and Steam as most of Hopoo Games, the creators of the Risk of Rain series, have now joined Valve.

A bit sad their next game is on hiatus, but I’m happy for them. I assume they’ll be working on Deadlock since it’s sort of similar to Risk of Rain 2.

  • @[email protected]English
    28•3 months ago

    Snowballing

    30/40min games where you’re unable to concede when loss is clear early on (causing other team mates to become stressed and rude). Games can sometimes be decided in 5 minutes yet there can potentially another half hour to go before you have a chance to requeue with different team mates.

    One team mate’s mistake early on can lead to the opposing team snowballing and the rest of the team becomes toxic due to the first point.

    The respawn timer increasing in length penalises the team further for being behind the enemy team, and the downtime as someone is waiting to spawn gives them time to type and be toxic. By mid-game, I’ve seen some players spend as much time waiting to respawn than they did playing.

    Losing begets losing.

    Macro and Meta

    The volume of items leads there to be objectively better builds (and meta after each patch as items stats are changed) leads expectations on all team mates to follow that meta and know which build to play otherwise they get raged on.

    Map awareness is more important that aiming and it takes the whole team to remain aware of the map for success.

    The lack of transparency as to why a person is losing to another (item selection, ability upgrades etc) irritates players into feeling cheated.

    Competitive

    As a competitive game, players are trying to prove themselves yet, as a team game, individual performance can’t make up for a weak team thus rage. Competition drives emotion.

    Note: I played Deadlock for about 15 to 20 matches but all the typical MOBA issues emerged within a couple of games, I’ve already bounced off of it.

    • @[email protected]English
      8•3 months ago

      I haven’t enjoyed any other mobas, but I’ve put ~100 hours in to this one. The comeback mechanics seem fine enough, I’ve had a few games that have come back from a ~30k soul difference.

      • skulblakaEnglish
        4•3 months ago

        Same, I haven’t even slightly enjoyed any other MOBA I’ve played except for Smite, but I’ve fallen in with Deadlock like it’s an old friend. And we’ve come back and won from a couple really depressing looking matches. Just the other day I was at 0/12 running Bebop with a 25k team soul deficit and once I actually got my head in the game, and got a little lane assist, we came back and won it and I finished with a 10/14 K/d.

        The comeback isn’t easy, and it shouldn’t be, but it’s doable. Especially so if your opponents get cocky. I’ve been on the other side of that coin as well, going 10/0 with Vindicta and fly out to snipe without a care in the world, to discover that every enemy is suddenly paying attention to where I am.