Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam, welcome to SideQuest. This is an episode where we're going to be talking about our latest obsession, Deadlock. This is a game made by Valve. It's their newest MOBA shooter still in playtesting. You'd be able to find this on Steam, so I don't expect too many people to know about it, but that's why we're here. Going to be joined by Violent Painter.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Hey.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Hey.
And we're going to be doing a little bit of a deep dive today, covering what it is, why we enjoy it, and some of the thoughts surrounding the current state of the game. As I mentioned, this is in playtesting, so it's not completely finished. Even things like Art Direction have been changed around since, like, we've been playing and. Wendy, actually, that's a good question. When do you think we started playing?
Shoot.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: I think we started playing about a year ago, 2024.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Is it really been a year?
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's been a year. At least. I remember last summer is about the time started playing.
I mean, I do have 1500 hours.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: 1500 fucking. Are you serious?
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Yeah, 1500 hours? Well, 1495 right now, but I'm saying.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: That, like, I'm surprised we had it written down.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Yeah, we did.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: It's so. Yeah, honestly, you know what's ironic is that I remember seeing this game for the first time and they were opening up play tests for those for who had, like, friends of people who were already in the early access.
And whenever that whole thing got released, it actually, I was so excited because it was like, oh, my God, Valve is making another game.
And.
And basically you had to go like, it was. So. It was kind of just like exclusive. So there was some sort of like.
There was kind of like exclusive factor. Yeah. So like.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah, you couldn't talk about it publicly.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: It actually ended up getting leaked, which.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Is how everyone else ended up getting. It's not. I wouldn't call it open because you still have to be invited, but I mean, honestly, it's really easy to get in. If you are trying to get in. I would just look it up. I think that some. So there's like a Reddit thread somewhere that I had to do, but basically I just messaged someone or I put a post there on that little Reddit thread that asks, you know, if you want an invite. Someone messaged me via Steam and then. And then I was able to get in. But I remember playing my first few games. This is coming from someone who has a lot of experience, like a couple thousand hours and a couple thousand dollars into Overwatch and the.
As you know, I'm gonna go on a quick rant here.
As Overwatch kind of became this. This thing that I just could not respect anymore, it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I just, like, I quit the game completely. I uninstalled my Blizzard launcher. I actually haven't touched it in a couple of years. I think the microtransactions were just getting too egregious. I think the team. You know, ever since Jeff Kaplan left, you know, he was kind of, like, one of the biggest reasons why a lot of people stuck around, because even if, you know, things weren't perfect, they were still being very upfront with us.
And I'm not, like, saying that they're not doing that now. I think things were just better generally whenever Jeff was around. So you. You have Overwatch 2 basically take over Overwatch 1, which renders. You know, the first insult is that it renders your original $40 purchase, like, completely for not. And another rant. I've seen the same exact thing happen to Team Fortress 2.
So Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, and Deadlock are all in the same in that they are all technically hero shooters. And if you're unfamiliar with what a hero shooter is, basically, you have very specific characters with very specific attributes. Some can fly, some can throw projectiles very far. Some use arrows. There's a whole bunch of, like, caricatures that you can pretty much create out of a hero shooter that makes it conducive for a really nice team environment.
And so Overwatch was a game that I was obsessed with for, like, years. I think I had joined about, like, a couple of months after its original release, past the beta. So I didn't play the beta, but it was so much fun. I had made so many friends on there. And generally, you know, at least back then, like, I thought it was just a really good community. I think the community did get a little bit more toxic as time went on. And, you know, admittedly, I was kind of a part of that.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Well, Internet video games.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Just. Just, you know, dumb competitive nature.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, it's gonna happen.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Yeah. It's. It's like when I saw TF2, which I originally had purchased, I think it was, like, in 2010 or 2012 for, like, $20. And looking back now, I. I wish they would have just kept that model.
I think, if you want to.
Basically what happened is that, like, once TF2 went free to play, the game became riddled with a Lot of problems, basically. And, you know, my first impression whenever it went free to play was that it.
I was like, great. My friends aren't willing to spend the $20 to play this game. So, like, it's great. I can show them the game. They're going to love it because I. I can show them why I love it. And then everyone's gonna have a good time. I'm gonna have more friends to play TFT with. So that's. I think that was the, like, intention. What ended up happening was you get bots that just fill these games up. And it was completely relentless. Like, you really couldn't get into a game without someone cheating. Like, it was just impossible. I think since then, you know, they've kind of been able to work and get a lot of this botting stuff down. But it was a really big problem, I will admit, before it ever reached, like, a really serious point, Overwatch had come out. And so when I started playing Overwatch for the first time, I was. I was really surprised. I was like, man, I was like, the quality of this is, like, really good. The models look really good. The environments look really cool. And there's different types of characters. There was a floating character, Pharah, who's. She has, like, rocket boots, and she uses rockets. And I was like.
It was like the first time where I was like, man, this is, like, cheating because I'm, like, just up from above shooting rockets down at people. They're just dying. It just seems, like, so easy. And I'm just like, I don't know if this is, like a. If I'm. I should be this good. And then, like, as time goes on, you get more familiar with the game. Everyone gets more familiar with the game. And you're now, you know, if you use Pharah, it's a pretty easy kill. You know, just depending on who you choose and how you choose to counter it, which we'll go into. One of the main differences here is that, like, during a game of Overwatch where you're, you know, 6v6, you know, it can be a control point where you're both fighting for the same spot. And you have to remain in a certain amount of time within this certain spot in order to control it. And then the timer runs down.
And then there was also payload, where you would transfer a payload.
In a lot of games, it's like a bomb. And TF2, it was also just like this gigantic bomb, and you would deliver it to the other side, the opposing team side, where it's more Like Attack and defend.
And both TF2 and Overwatch had that, but Overwatch just had this polish that I.
I'm not going to say that Valve didn't have the polish, but it was just something that. It was just new, you know, it was just like a new shiny toy that it just like. I felt like it did a lot of things better. I think it was more diverse in the character selection, different archetypes. I thought it was kind of refreshing that like every character didn't have four or five attachments that you could use with every playthrough or every game. And it was.
I just felt like it was. It was guided better too. Because TF2. I go to TF2 if I'm looking for chaos. If I want something more structured, then I'll probably go to Overwatch. They both serve the same purpose. Each of them are incredible games. Each of them have really great art direction. And I love Valve and I did at one time love Overwatch. But as time went on, you know, the transactions just got super, like, crazy. People used to complain about the loot boxes where you would earn cosmetics and all sorts of stuff for these characters, which, you know, they didn't alter the gameplay in any way except for maybe how you look at them, but was just enticing enough for. For me to spend a good amount of money on it. Mainly whenever it came to, like, holiday stuff like, oh my God, the first Halloween that I experienced, I'm pretty sure I put down like at least like 150 bucks. And it was really just to have like these really cool skins.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Holy.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: League of Legends would get me like that with skins and recolors and new art.
Yeah, Transactions can get a little overwhelming. But when I looked at the two games, Overwatch and TF2, as far as, like art direction, I wouldn't mind spending some on cosmetics for Overwatch. I think it looks nice. I haven't played it much, but it looks cool. The characters, like, look memorable and lovable. And with TF2, I really didn't. I know they are iconic characters, but just me personally, I'm not really. I don't really like, have an attachment to the characters like Spy and Heavy and Scout or whoever they are. I didn't play much of them either, but I think that's where Deadlock really excels, is their character design and art. And I am just dying for some cosmetics. Like, take my money.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah, we gotta. We got a taste of these cosmetics, like back last Christmas and you had to do like a special Challenge for every single. For each character. I'm not gonna say every single character, but each character had their own special challenge and it was conducive to, like, what their abilities were. So you had to do, you know, a certain ability this way or, you know, get this amount of kills or whatever.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Catch this amount of people when you're old.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly like that, I think, was just a really cool way to introduce that. But, like, the. The.
The sad thing is, is that the cosmetics weren't permanent. And so, like, you don't get to keep them even if you did earn them. I have a feeling that they'll be brought back and we will get them back. I just feel like Valve will do as well by that like that. But it's.
Since spending a lot of money on Overwatch was just kind of like a problem for me, and especially once Overwatch 2 launched and didn't follow through with any of the promises, which were, you know. Let me back up a little bit. So overwatch is a 6ft Sorry, 5. 5. It's now a 5v5. It used to be 6v6. It turned into 5v5. And there was a lot of controversy about that. We can go into that later. I'll do another episode on Overwatch and I'll bitch more about it. But so lots of changes. You know, it didn't seem. It seems like Overwatch was losing its direction. And then whenever Overwatch 2 came out, the only difference between Overwatch 1 and Overwatch 2 was really just how you unlocked cosmetics, which were now, you know, through a battle pass.
And then all of the skins that were previously available, you know, through loot boxes and other ways, like, you could definitely earn your way into a nice cosmetic now had to be straight up purchased. And, you know, there's something to be said about, like, how microtransactions are, but like, in the.
I feel like for what it was, for the loot boxes, I felt like it was actually reasonable, weirdly enough. Now, if you're not the type of person to spend any sort of money on, like, games, that's completely your prerogative. I was not that person either until Overwatch. But there's a. I think this was the first time I had ever felt fomo, a fear of missing out. And if you didn't get these Halloween skins or these Christmas skins or, you know, the summer skins or any other holiday that they could wrap their head around, it was, you know, it just meant that you weren't going to be able to access that kind of reward for the rest of that year until that holiday rolled around again.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: And if you don't have those rewards, you're not a dedicated player, are you?
You don't have those cosmetics.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: It is kind of like a weird flex. But like the thing about Overwatch 1 is that like everyone had the ability to at least earn these cosmetics one way or another. In Overwatch 2, it basically started out to where you cann.
To be fair, it's been a couple years. I think it's been like two years now since I've played it. So I'm not sure if anything like that has changed. You can let us know in the comments.
I did not bother downloading the game again to see what's going on because I just don't. It's. It's so far out of my mind.
I'm still bitter about it though. Obviously Deadlock the. I would say the similarities between Deadlock and Overwatch are their interesting art directions.
And I will disagree with you a little bit on the, on the TF2 thing. I do think those, those characters are iconic, especially like a person like the heavy. I think though, what is kind Of Lost between TF2 or sorry, between Overwatch to TF2, if you were going to look at it that way, is that the TF2 characters operate more in like a uniform fashion. So you have team Red and then team Blue and then you have like offshoot cause like not neutral tone but just like different cosmetics that you could put on to each character and they would reflect whether you were on red or blue. In Overwatch they're just straight up like whole skins. So maybe you had a, you know, a normal skin pharah, but now you have this like really cool ghost purple, you know, dead looking pharah. And they also had one where it was like she hit, you know, looked like Anubis and she was golden. That was my favorite one.
And so there were just so many different ways that you could express yourself in that game. So I. The way that TF2 does it, it's. The big thing was hats. Hats were like crazy. And like I used to. I've put in 6, 1700 hours into TF2 and I'm not gonna lie, a lot of that was so TF2 had these hats and you were able to trade for them. You were able to earn them through boxes. And so the hats were a big deal. That was the best way that you could express yourself. And then they introduced, you know, accessories you could get, you know, goggles, you could get Sometimes they had gloves, pins, things like that that you could do, and then they kind of just get more elaborate as time goes on. If you look down the timeline, so there was a lot of expression there. It's just, I would say, a little less accessible because you either have to put in the time or you have to spend the money, which I don't think either is, like, a terrible choice, at least not back then. But TF2 used to have this economy, I want to say, like, Counter Strike, which has a bunch of skins and things that you can purchase for your guns and stuff. Where it used to be, it used to operate kind of like a marketplace. I spent a lot of time meeting friends and, like, trading in these marketplace servers. Basically, it's more than just like, playing the game. You're also just, you know, shooting the shit with someone and you're trying to trade for a better hat, you know, just because, you know, that was a fun thing to do. It's a way to grow with the community. And I thought it was really cool.
And then Overwatch kind of just simplifies it, and I think that was good. You can earn it. And then once you get to Overwatch 2, these skins are now, like, anywhere from 15 to $30. I think I saw one recently, which was, like, $50, and I think I saw one that was. It was something golden.
I'm okay with being wrong, I'm pretty sure, but it was golden. It was for, like, a brand, and it was, like, $80.
And that's when, like, I saw that. I remember seeing Diva and this brand. I'm not gonna mention the brand, but, like, I saw this branded, you know, skin, and I was like, oh, my God. This is no longer anything like it used to be. This is. This is a. This is a shell of itself. This is no longer going to be viable for me. And I see where this is going. They haven't delivered on any of the promises, and that is why I had to leave. But Deadlock does something totally different. First of all, default skins in this game are all incredibly, like, imaginative, and they have a really good style. I would say it's like, like, 40s, 50s style. And they have, like, a lot of ghosts involved. So think of, like, 40s, 50s, kind of, like, almost steampunk. It looks kind of steampunkish.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: It's like a cult. Yeah, like these 50s occult kind of vibe, like magic has suddenly entered into the world through a maelstrom of sorts. And so each character has their own, like, motivations and things. They want to get from the ultimate goal, which is to summon a patron through a ritual. And that is the core goal of the game, is summoning the patron by defeating the other team's patron. Mm.
And the. The whole vibe is so cool. And all of the characters are freaks, each with their own detailed or not yet fleshed out lore. So it's still totally work in progress. But it's been one of the most interesting aesthetics I've ever seen out of a game, especially one coded, like a multiplayer hero shooter. You've never seen a vibe like this. Usually it's like more of like a futuristic or a cyberpunk kind of look, but this is so fresh, which this game used to be, used to be a kind of a cyberpunk vibe. It used to be called Neon Prime.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. But.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: But then they just adjusted the art direction a hundred percent complete 180. And I can't believe they did that out of nowhere.
But I think that's exactly what. What it needed to just make the initial draw so. So nice.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: It gives off this timeless vibe that I think, you know, there's. There's one part, like, familiarity and then one part intrigue, where you're wondering, like, what do ghosts have to do with this world? What? Why? What the fuck is a patron? And like, all this other stuff before we kind of dive a little bit deeper into that. I know that I come from an Overwatch background, but Painter, you.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: You had experience with another game, right?
[00:19:05] Speaker B: I did League of Legends. So Deadlock being a MOBA hero shooter mishmash, a genre mishmash, basically kind of makes it feel like, yeah, if you combined Overwatch and League of Legends. I never played overwatch, never played TF2. I played a little bit of Overwatch on the switch and it just. Just didn't run right. But I played a whole lot of League of Legends. I haven't played since 2015.
It's been a while, but I played a lot. Put a lot of hours in.
God, that game's old now.
The strategy of a MOBA is so cool. And it's a little bit like a hero shooter in that each character has their own unique abilities that operate differently in a team fight. Like, there's crowd control, which means like, stunning someone or stopping them in their place, lowering their resistances. They have all kinds of things like that in a mobile, like League of Legends or Smite. And I really like how many things you have to think about, like your own score, your own level throughout the game, and what kind of items you're buying. How are the, the lanes doing? Because in a moba, you have multiple lanes that are being pushed, which means our minions are fighting their team's minions and they're pushing each other in this fight to take eventually their objective, the ultimate objective.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Think of it like a football field. Like, like, like you have the, the 50 yard line and then you have the hundred and then you have the, the touchdown zone on each end. Right. The MOBA is pretty much like that. Like you're trying to get your minions to be able to cross to the other side. So that way you can take the final objective. And there's two other objectives in that path that you have to overcome, and it's basically a race to the finish for each team.
So that's probably the simplest way that I could put it. It's kind of like football.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
And so, yeah, that's. That's essentially League of Legends. You might have heard of it. It's very.
Everyone says the, the community, of course, is, is toxic, but I think that's honestly a hallmark of a really well designed game. People are very passionate about it. They get angry.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And honestly, there was a.
I remember seeing a video once of Gabe Newell. I think he was playing. I think he mentioned that he was playing counter strike, but Dota 2. Oh, it was Dota 2. Okay. So then it was. He was saying something about. He wasn't even complaining, but he was just saying, like, yeah, I had a couple of fellow players, you know, say some really crazy stuff to me and, you know, I don't take any offense to it. It just means that they're passionate about the game. And so, like, I think you hit the nail on the head with that.
You know, it just means, it means that, you know, if. I think we talked about this at another podcast, but basically there's. There's loving a game, there's hating a game, and then there's indifference, which, you know, I became indifferent to Overwatch, but there was parts where I loved it and then parts where I just hated it.
I feel the same way with this game. And it's one of the few games that, because you have to think about so much, and we joke about this all the time, time talking about micro and macro decisions.
We'll get into that here in a sec. But you love the complexity. I love that. Like, it's a game that you have to grow into. But the problem with a game like this, I would think, and I've observed personally through some of my other friends, is that it Takes time to understand everything about the game.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: It's hard to get into. It's hard to get your friends into it. There is so much to think about and it's. It's like, who has the time?
[00:22:49] Speaker A: You.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: I've heard that Deadlock is not a game for employed people because it's just so much time and so much investment to think about.
And every game is like.
Is going to be a good 40 minutes of your time, guaranteed.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I think the quickest game that we've had was. I think. I've never seen it go below, like, 20 minutes.
Yeah. And then the highest that I've seen was an hour and 10 minutes, which those are grueling games, but generally your games are going to be around like 30 to 45 minutes. So having to commit to that kind of time, it can be challenging for people. And then, especially if the games are running 45 minutes a pop, then you're. You run three games in a row, you know, and that's like, in a row because, like, we would, we would play the game, we would lose.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: It feels so bad when you lose.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: If you've ever played a long game and lost, you just got to play another. You can't end on that loss.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you have to do it again. And you just want to keep going until you do and you have something satisfying. I think, though, that would probably be my first. I'll call it a criticism. I think it's. It's nothing to do with the game really, but I think it just has to do with like, the. The mode itself. So I'm going to be the first to tell you that I'm like, I.
I love the shit out of this game. I do not feel like I'm that good at it. Like, I think it took me about like 200 hours for me for something to click in my brain and be like, oh, I could. I could do it this way. And then things were a little bit better since they've been adding, like, new characters and changing the dynamics of, like, how players interact with the world. Or they used to have teleporters that were more frequent in the map where you could get around a little bit more quickly. I became more frustrated with it because I felt like these were things that helped the game.
But when you look at it as from a. From a larger, From a higher level view, you can see why the decisions were made.
And I had. I've had a lot of internal battles, whether I even wanted to, like, keep playing this game, but it's just like, that's the thing is that I am extremely passionate about this, this project. But that being said, to have someone commit to a 45 minute game and to do that like three times a night.
We were doing that for like months straight. Like I don't think I did anything except get off work, get to my computer and then we would put like three or four games in that night.
League of Legends folks already know this was a huge like difference for me.
Because Overwatch, you have games that are like, like 15, 20 minutes max. And so if you lose or if you are starting off really bad, you know, it's a, it's like, you know, at least, yeah, it'll, it'll probably be over within the next five minutes because they're just rolling us or, or you know, or you have a more interesting game where you're able to come back, have a little Cinderella story. And that's kind of nice. But I think in a game like Deadlock, if you eat, if you suck in the, in the first phase, it's called the laning phase, we'll get into more detail about that. Then you're pretty much opening up the door for that whole game to suck for your team. Whether it's because you're feeding, which feeding just means that you are. Anytime that you kill another character, you gain a certain amount of souls. The souls give you an advantage because you're able to use those souls as currency to purchase items. Those items gives you give you even more advantages. So on top of getting like a strength, a gun or an ability boost, you're also able to buy items to enhance that even further.
So if you.
I still struggle with this, but if you, if you basically like, if you die within like the first 10 minutes, you're opening the door first, basically just get steamrolled. So you have to be really careful in the lane phase. So if you're the type of person that thinks that like Run and Gun is probably your kind of game, you got to think about it a little bit more carefully than that. Now you wanna, there's, there's characters that are conducive to every playstyle. That's the beauty of games like this because it can allow for a wider range of skill whenever it comes to shooters and, and you know, things like MOBAs. Because I was new to MOBAS starting Deadlock and all I really had experience with was payload and control points on Overwatch and TF2.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: I like characters that can get out a lot. And so there's a lot of choices for me. Like there's Lash, there's Ivy. Lash has a lot of movement. He can use his two ability grapple, where he's able to grab onto any enemy, any small little trooper or minion, and he can launch himself very far off of that. If there's none of that around though, he's screwed.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Or your own teammates, right, can fly away.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Or your own teammates, you can just grapple on them and jump away. Ivy can just fly away.
That is her ultimate ability. And she can also fly a teammate out of danger. And so I noticed, like in my own playstyle, that speaks a lot to me. Overextending a lot, I go too deep. So Valve has characters for me. Maybe I should try more characters that can get out.
So that's good.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: They.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Sorry, they also have aim characters. No, yeah, you're good. Like. Like if you're a shooter player, you want to play a Haze, you want to play a Wraith, if you have really good aim, they have Mirage, they have Mina, they have all kinds of options.
Any kind of player. Vindicta. Yeah, Paradox. All very lovable, memorable characters.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: But yeah, each very unique. And like someone like me, for instance, I like burst damage. So when I'm playing Overwatch, my characters. Remote was basically Junkrat. Junkrat was my main. Because you could literally throw in like three or four bombs at once. If you're. If you're aiming correctly, then you'll typically kill someone and then you can just bounce out, you can just dip. So that's kind of always been my play style. Whenever I started, I started playing with Abrams, which is this detective demon guy, and he has this book which allows him to press one and he can basically just drain the life out of like another character.
They're within his range and they're in front of him, which is something I learned. I thought it was all around, but it turns out it's just in front of him. But that is more conducive to like close combat gameplay because he. He also uses a shot. It's like. Like a revolver, shotgun, pistol, basically. It's so it's very big emphasis on like close range combat.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Brawler type.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Yeah, brawl. Definitely a brawler. Like the main point of Abrams is that his melee attacks do a little bit more damage than everyone else.
So on the. The caveat to that being he doesn't regenerate as much health in the beginning.
Well, we can get into builds and stuff here in a bit because I can easily. Quite a topic. Yeah, that is quite a topic. But how about.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah, how about we start out with, like, how it. How a general game goes, like, from start to finish? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Do you want to start or should we.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'll give it a go. Let's do so. So a game being maybe about. Let's call this game 40 minutes long.
So the first nine minutes, you and your lane partner.
Well, first there's three sets of lanes and then two people to a lane. So six versus six.
You and your lane partner will zip into a lane, and it takes you 14 seconds to get there. Your character probably has a little interaction with the other character, which I thought was really nice touch. And gives you a peek into the lore as you're waiting for the game to start. And you can also switch lanes during this time. So if you don't like the matchup that you're given, you can request a switch with someone at the top of your screen. That's really cool. If you want to, like, reorient your team or, like, if you understand the other team's abilities, that's a good way to, like, dig into their weaknesses. A good way to switch is to jump the zip lines instead of using the option above. That way the team doesn't know who's going to show up to the lane.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: That's a good point.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: But at this point in the game, as soon as you get down, the minions will come a little bit after you. You want to make sure you kill those minions and you kill the soul orb that appears above their head. And you want to do your best to kill the red soul orb that appears from the minions on your side after the enemy team kills them.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Right. So just to recap. Just to recap.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: So when you're starting off in the lane, the minions are coming after you. Both parties are in this lane. So minions are fighting each other. You're fighting the minions, and you're also fighting the other players. When you kill a minion, they give souls. In the laning phase, you get, like, a set specific amount of souls for the first nine minutes. So you get half. And then if you want the other half, you have to confirm it, or the other team has a chance to steal the souls that the other half of the souls that come out of a minion by shooting the orb that drops out of them when they are killed.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Yes.
The equivalent in League of Legends, for example, is just getting the last hit on a minion that confirms, like, you get the. You get the money for that. Imagine if you could steal someone else's last hit.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Your opposing team's last hit.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Your opposing team's last hit. Yes.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Because, I mean, like, if you're in the same lane and you. You confirm it, you get the same amount of souls. Right. So if me and Painter are in the same lane, I kill a minion. And let's say, just for. As an example, it gives me 50 souls. Painter also gets 50 souls. Yeah, we.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: We get. We get 60. We share 60%.
Like, it's most efficient to have two people in a lane. This is always changing, though. Valve is always changing these numbers around.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's part of what makes it exciting.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: Yeah, the changes make it fun.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: Right. It's. It's frustrating and fun. Like, and we'll go into that. But like. So there's a big emphasis on being able to manage a couple of things. You're managing the distance between you and the enemy player, whether or not you're getting all souls from the minions that you're killing. And then the first real objective that you have is called a Guardian. Think of it as like your first tower in League of Legends. We don't really have an equivalent in Overwatch, but once when you defeat the Guardian, it releases a bunch of souls, and it also has its own way to defend itself, just like any other tower. And you have to be able to defeat the opposing team's minions, and then they also have to be. Your minions need to be able to make it up to the Guardian, so that way they can take the brunt of the hit that the Guardians dealing out. Because if they're not doing. If they're not taking the brunt, then you are.
And that's gonna end very badly for you if you let that go on for too long.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: So already that's. That's quite a lot to. To think about in the first 10 minutes of a game.
So it's. So it. It's a little difficult to get someone into it immediately, but once you get the rhythm of it, the. The variety of. Or the difference in feel from late game to middle game to early game is so different. It's just so easy to get hooked to just queue for another game and then do this for the next 10 minutes.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Try a new strategy, try a new build, Try focusing. Something different, like a new character.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: New character.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: A new lane placement, even could.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: Just new items.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Exactly. And I think.
I guess that kind of covers the first part, the laning phase. Sure. So let's. Let's go on to mid game.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So usually in a game, about 10 minutes in is when The Guardian is defeated and one side is starting to roam around the map. So there are farm camps at three different tiers all around the map. Tier one, very easy to take. Tier two, about medium, and then tier three, they're gonna take a long time to take and often it's just best to get those in the late game. But mid game here at 10 minutes, the objectives still have a lot of shields. So there's another objective after the Guardian called a walker. It's a lot larger and a lot more hefty, has a lot more shielding, and that shielding diminishes greatly every minute after the 10 minute mark. And at 16 minutes they become a lot easier to take. And so during this time you want to roam around the game.
The game map you want to gank, which means interrupt someone else's laning phase. They might still be working on taking the Guardian, so you want to help them do that. And then once you ensure everybody has taken their first guardian, that allows you another item slot to, to purchase items in. You do start out with eight, I forgot to mention.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah, oh yes, you get a totality of 12.
Yeah, totality of 12 items. And over the whole course of the game, and that's assuming that you get all of the slot unlocks which have different parameters for each of them. But basically you get to the end if you, if you get to the other side, you have all the item slots. Basically, yes. And yeah, you take up, you do.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Your best to take your first walker and that gets you another slot for 10 slots total. Once you take all the walkers, 11 slots and then one set of the, and then after the walkers, there's a set of two guardians at each of the lanes. So six total base guardians they're called. Those will give you your last slot.
So at this point, after you take a walker, hopefully you're defending your walkers too. There's a lot to manage on the map in mid game. You have to make sure you have control of the map, the lane isn't pushing too far and none of your walkers are in danger. All the while making offensive plays and keeping an eye on the enemy team.
If you don't see any of the enemy team on your map, then you don't know what's going on, you don't know what they're planning, where they are. And so it's best to be either defensive or have a way out because they're probably coming for you.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: And just a side note on that, you do have the ability to ping in this game and if you do ping. You can reveal that character's location for like a brief second. And if the minions are seeing the enemy, even if you're like on the other side of the map, they will still indicate that they see that enemy. And you'll be able to see them temporarily on the map as well until they leave the minion site.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: That's a good point.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: So there's. There's lots of ways that because you're not flying totally blind. Which I think is a smart choice for a game like this. And just thought, just as a side note, like I thought it was worth it is.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And after. After a while you get to late game. It's.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: The mid game is like a mix of like making yourself stronger and getting objectives and. Whereas late game is full on objectives like you wanna. And fights and kills. And there are long respawns probably around the 25 minute mark is when I'd say you'd enter late game. Everybody's getting strong.
Your people that have snowballed like need to start making moves. Otherwise the other team has a lot of chance to come back and get stronger. There's objectives like the Soul Earn that can get your team a lot of souls and it can be used as bait. Also the Soul Earn to describe it. It's basically a small objective that you have to run to the other side of the map usually from middle to middle.
And it's very dangerous. You can't attack while you're holding it. You can't use your abilities. You just have to get it to the other side and stand in a spot for a few seconds to turn it in and then get your team a whole lot of souls. Everybody can see you while you're carrying the soul urn, the opposing team included. So you. You got to get it there fast and you gotta. You gotta make sure you turn it in. Or you can use it as. As bait for the enemy team to gather so that your team can converge on an ambush and kill them.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: Either converge on an ambush or use that to claim another objective.
True that.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Or draw them away from an objective. You're ready to take another walker.
Yeah. So there's a lot of different strategies.
Sometimes they won't fall for the bait and they send just a couple people that are good at defending. Urn. And you don't get anything and you just wasted time and now they're ahead.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: So it's a risk.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Many strat. Many tragedies, I was going to say that have happened where like you get it all the Way to the other side. One thing about the urn that's kind of also important to note is that like if you get shot, you don't. You don't release the urn from your possession. But if you get punched in any way, I think it has to be a heavy punch, right?
[00:39:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I believe I'll have to check.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: And now I got. Now I'm not in, so sure. But basically you can hit someone for sure with a heavy melee move and they will drop it.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: And then most alts. Most alts will also tear the Soul urn out of your hand. Except for Ivy. Ivy Stone form is what does it. Not her old.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Oh, yes. So that is to say you've been stunned while holding the urn and so you drop it. So like if there's any kind of crowd control that. That you've been affected by, then you'll have released the urn.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Stun, but not knock up.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Yes, that's. Yeah, that is true. But that's a little. Little side objective.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you can get it.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: And one of the cool parts about the urn, I think is that like, if you are very ahead of the like let's say, because everyone's counting their souls, their currency, throughout the entire game, and in a way you're able to kind of determine that character's power level from their Soul Count, their currency. And let's say your team is pretty behind.
Unlike the Soul Count, if you are able to successfully run the urn from one side to the other, like if you're just slightly below the other team in the Soul Count, then it gives you a boost which will either surpass the enemy team's Soul Count or it'll at least match it. But let's say that you are just having a horrible front start to the game, two things will happen. Instead of having to run from one side to the other with the urn, it basically makes it to where the urn will have a place on your own side which is going to be more protected naturally because your whole team's usually on that side and you're able to kind of turn it in there. And it would be up to the higher level players or the other, the opposing team who has higher level players side to stop you from getting that, which I think is a really good balancing move. On the alternative, let's say that we're still losing terribly and the other team decides to go for the earn. That earn will be in the same place. It would be on the losing team's side where they would have to go a little bit further in order for them to actually achieve that.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: It's a lot harder. It's a lot more riskier, and. And sometimes you're so strong that doesn't matter. They can't do anything about it.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: Yeah, and those are pretty nice moments because there's. There's a good. And a downside to that because, like, if you're on the winning side, it obviously feels really good to be able to take out or four characters at once and. And subject them to minute long respawn times versus, like, like being the receiving end of that. And, and just like, that's, that's the point of the game where you'll be like, this is bullshit. But it just kind of goes to show, I was like, damn, if I would have had a better earlier game, if we would have been able to strategize more, if my team would have come together to defend this earned placement, then we could have turned this around. And one of the things about Deadlock that I really appreciate is that you. You have to communicate. I'm not sure how, like, conducive it was in League of Legends, because I'm not gonna say that I'm familiar with League of Legends at all. I've played maybe like five games of League of Legends and five games of Dota 2. Like, that's my experience.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: It's very important, like calling your lane missing, telling people where others are. They also have something called vision words that you can place around the map so that you can keep an eye on certain openings and, like, key spots.
[00:43:15] Speaker A: That's interesting.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I wish. I wish League. I mean, I wish Deadlock had some sort of a vision ward.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: I think it kind of works in the opposite way because they have.
What is it called? The veil. The mystic veil is.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, the veil walker.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So. So there's certain walls that will have this veil. And it's basically. Basically when you're. When you haven't passed through it and you're like, seeing it, you know, within your vision, within like the first, like, 15 seconds or something like that, then you can't see what's on the other side, even if you're right up front against it. Once you. Once you cross that threshold, you can still kind of. You can go back, like behind where you just were from the veil, and you can still see beyond it. But that really gives a chance for either side to. To make a surprise attack at that location.
Yeah.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: Great ambush spot.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Right. And so to me, now that you mentioned the vision boards and League of Legends. I'm like, oh, they do something like that. It's. But it's kind of the opposite.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is vision away in those areas.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: It's kind of. It's kind of interesting.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So you're getting strong. You got an earn, and you're entering late game, right?
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: And by this point, you're taking base guardians. Your next objectives are going to be the shrines. There's two shrines on the left and right side of your home base. You got to take one of those. You got to take both of those, and then eventually you have to kill the patron. Above all the while, their team is right next to a fountain of health that they can heal at and then come and poke you down some and then heal back up. Or you're just gonna kill them, and then you can kill their patron too. And then you have to kill their patron again after you've killed it when it's floating in the air. And so, yeah, it takes about 12 seconds to drop.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: Right, right, right. So. So when you enter the base, the patron's floating there, and they're doing, like, minimal damage, so they're. They're floating in the air. When you take out the shrines, you then kill the patron, and then the patron begins to deconstruct, and it goes a little bit further into the enemy's base, and then it drops after 12 seconds, like you said. And then that is when it's in a weakened state, is what they call it. And so when you kill the patron in its weakened state, you win the game.
So. Yeah, but the. The. The late game is easily the most fun part of the game because it takes the culmination of your build, what you've kind of done for that game, and it brings it all to a head, and so you're able to utilize your character to its maximum potential, or maybe not, if you haven't built the right. Made the right build.
And that's easily the most exciting part of the game. It's also the scariest part of the game because if you die, I think the highest respawn timer that I had was like 80 seconds or 85 seconds.
So you don't want to die, because being away for that long means that you're not getting souls, which means that you're not leveling up, and the other team is getting souls, and they're still continuing to level up. And you mentioned snowballing earlier.
Yes, snowballing. Just to educate, basically.
Like the metaphor of a snowball. If you roll it across snow, then it continues to get larger and larger and larger. And so you're kind of doing the same exact thing whenever you are getting souls and adding things to your build, getting more powerful. So the metaphor is between not necessarily the character, but just its power.
So just to kind of explain that. And so once everyone has been snowballing, whether it's slow or very fast, the team fights that are conducive in the late game are that much more exciting. There's a lot of risk involved. And it's because of that that this is when things get really passionate. Because if you aren't feeling strong in the late game, then, and I'll go into this a little bit, then you aren't feeling like you have any confidence in yourself or you may not have confidence in one of your other team members. So I genuinely think that, like half the game of Deadlock. I'm not going to speak to MOBAs in general because I'm not going to say that I'm familiar. But like half the, the game in Deadlock is psychological. Like, if you are able to take a beating, like, let's say you just die like a lot this game, but you're still maintaining a positive attitude, you are still going to be somewhat ahead of someone who's maybe died once and is freaking out about it. Yes. Because that. And I always refer to the movie Crank with Jason Statham and more importantly, Paul Giamatti.
Paul Giamatti in the, in the, in the movies. Just like I try not to get stressed out because if I do, then it's something to the effect of like, if you, if you get stressed out, you're 50% more likely to make a rash, irresponsible decision. And so I tried to keep myself composed, which is a good.
Funny, because Jason Statham has to keep his heart rate up in order to survive. So cool movie if you haven't seen it. But it's the same principle. If you can keep your cool and also work well with your team, then you're gonna have a much better time than, you know, someone that is still snowballing, I guess, like beating the out of the other team and not playing well with their other teammates.
Yeah.
[00:48:31] Speaker B: Even if you get behind, there's still ways to help out, like either with your kit or you can buy utility items. There's something called Knockdown that can stun anybody out of a really important game changing ability or Silence Wave, which silences their abilities.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Yeah, things like that makes it to where you can't use the abilities.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: So, so many dynamics.
And so, like, since I'm not that good, I would say I'm. I'm gonna go ahead and just say I'm adept. I'm not gonna say that I'm good. I'm just like, I'm okay. Like, I can have a lot better. I have a lot more fun during the mid and the late game because I usually just miff it in the first, like, 10 minutes during the laning phase. And it's something that I'm still struggling with and I. You can watch all the videos on, like, how to play your character in the most optimized way and all that, but it really just comes down to your decisions, which I guess we can kind of get into micro and micro and macro.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: It. It's.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: I want to see how you explain this, actually.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: How. How to explain micro and macro. So I consider macro the big picture macro big. And so that is making sure all of your lanes are pushed and making sure you have like a build in mind or some sort of counter build in mind for what's happening according to their team. And so building your items around that and keeping your waves pushed as far as micro, I consider that, like, Soul Farming and like, keep making sure you're saving the right ability points and just getting your money up and your abilities. Right.
So each ability has three upgrades to it, and each of those upgrades can give you a lot for your abilities, whether it's damage range or just sheer effectiveness. Yeah, yeah. And I think managing your money helps you or I know managing your money gets you your ability points to spend on those upgrades.
So ensuring you are getting all of the souls, every little bit of that wave and making sure you're spending every second at max efficiency. Like, you know when a particular buff is going to appear.
So you are spending time running toward that direction. Like making sure you're spending the right time at the right time.
The right amount of time at the right time, doing a particular thing.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: The right amount of time is a very important detail too. Yes. Because in a game like this, every single second counts, which is why you even have ideas like micro and macro also.
And. And I'm okay with being wrong on this, but like, I also would consider a micro decision during a fight. Like, yeah, if your health is going down and you're noticing that your health is going down, but you continue to push forward against the team, then you're making a micro decision to. To continue facing that team despite the fact that you're low on health. If you go back and go to your base, for instance, to go heal, then that is a micro decision to go salvage yourself. So that's a very broad way of putting it, but it's, it's things like that, like second to second decisions versus over the match decisions. I would probably also put putting people towards completing an objective like a guardian or a walker as a macro decision because that's not a second to second reaction. That's more like, we need to go get this so that way we can get our extra slots and so that way we can become more powerful. This is a decision that everyone has or at least a certain amount of people need to agree on in order for the team to be successful. Which again, going back to like communication like any moba, like, like Overwatch. And of course, as Painter mentioned, there's kind of like a, there's some toxic things going on. Again, like conducive to the genre itself, where you just have people who are passionate and, and I think the wholesome way of looking at it is that I just want my whole team to do well and to be successful.
[00:52:42] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:52:43] Speaker A: The way that it comes out is what in the absolute are you doing?
Like, why are you. Like, why?
Yeah, why have you died eight times this match? It's been 15 minutes, no assists. Yeah, and it's. And it's. Exactly. And it's like, what the fuck are you. And I see one of my examples that I think about the most is like, if we're taking over. No, I think a better example. If the opposing team is in your base and they're just like going through your shrines, they're taking your objectives and they're kind of going through it. And let's say there's five out of six of you at the base defending the base. If someone else is off farming or maybe, maybe they're trying to complete another objective while, you know, the base while no one else is guarding any of these other objectives, that's, that's a flip of a coin whether or not, you know, you want to call them out for being like, hey, like, we could use some fucking help here at the base.
Or, you know, if they successfully get an objective, it's kind of like, good job. It's like, it's good. We could have used the help still.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: So it's just, it's. You want to be very team oriented. I would say, for, for those that are used to, you know, having the biggest kills, the large, the, the. What am I saying? The largest amount of kills in the game, this is really not about that. This is more about completing the objectives and making sure that your team is successful. And you can do that by assisting them just by being beside them, fighting beside them, helping them with farm, like destroying farms, helping someone run the urn. Like, you know, things like that. If someone's getting chased and they're about to die and you managed to kill the enemy player before they killed them, that helps a lot, you know, so it's, it's collaborative, things like that that I think are the most challenging part of Deadlock. Because especially if you haven't put like that many hours into it, you're not going to understand the nuance of what is to be expected for a while. Again, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say it took me about 50 to like 100 hours for me to get the basics. I didn't really get it until like 200 hours in. This is not to scare you, okay? Like, I'm not saying that you're gonna have a bad time between zero and 200 hours. It's just that there's so much you could, you could take a class on Deadlock and you would still be wrong in a lot of ways.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: I'm still learning a whole lot about Deadlock and I, I am. 1500 hours.
[00:55:09] Speaker A: In 1500 staggering hours, this dude's always playing it.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: I'm always playing this game. Another quick point on, on Micro, I wanted to add there, like, if you are being chased, like one person being chased by two people, you're interrupting those two people's plans. What if they're planning on taking an objective and they're spending 20 seconds chasing you? That's two people out of the game for the whole team to be working on objectives versus. Versus just one, you being chased.
So if you can get those two people to chase you, that's good micro to me.
[00:55:42] Speaker A: Me. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And, and that's, that's another thing kind of going back to like, if you're the type of person that just wants to have the highest amount of kills in a game, then it's, it's different than what you expect. It would be good to always be able to have the highest amount of kills, mainly because that means that you likely have the most amount of souls. But if, if you're making a ton of kills and you're not making any objectives, then you're more of a tool of destruction rather than like anything that is actually useful towards the objective of the game, which I think a lot of people Struggle with in the beginning.
[00:56:20] Speaker B: The right item can still shut down someone who has snowballed so far. Like.
Like a disarming hex or just a knockdown. I remember one player who was aimbotting on McGinnis. They still lost even though she was raking in the kills because there was so many options like metal skins and disarming hex knock down just to make her weaker. Her aimbot didn't even matter. The abilities took her down anyway.
[00:56:47] Speaker A: That's. Yeah. Which kind of just goes to show like there is obviously a lot of thought that's put into this game. I know that in the community there is the main creator of this game, I think, goes by Ice Frog and he also basically drew the blueprints for Dota 2 and the original Dota actually.
Shout out to Ice Rock. Badass. But there's also just like. What was I saying? What were we just talking about? Oh, micro decisions, micro macro.
[00:57:17] Speaker B: We could move to itemization, I think.
[00:57:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So anyway, shout out Ice Frog. I love this game. Can't wait to see more. I don't know when the official like date will. When it's officially released will be happening. I'm pretty sure it's going to be more than a year from now.
But I want to move. We'll just move on to like different types of builds. We could spend hours talking about builds. Oh yeah. So I kind of want to try to see if we can give like a high level overview.
[00:57:43] Speaker B: Yeah, let's look. Let's go over the three categories, I think. So we have weapon vitality and spirit weapon category. That's offensive weapons that usually buff your character's gun. Each character has a gun or a weapon that is ranged. Yeah.
Say again.
[00:58:01] Speaker A: Oh, so like weapon would refer to both the gun and the character's melee ability.
[00:58:07] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Weapon damage. You have bullet damage and weapon damage.
Weapon damage is both your bullets and your melee. And there are all sorts of passive stats that you get from all of these items in all categories. So some weapon items might still give you some more spirit power, some might give you some bonus health.
And then we also have the vitality category. This is where you get tanki. You get health from these items as well as they have their own passives.
[00:58:38] Speaker A: Like resistance, which basically just mitigates damage from either abilities or your gun or other. I mean other people's gun is what I mean. So that's kind of where like vitality comes in, whether it's extra health, whether it's resistance healing itself. Exactly. Healing, healing.
[00:58:53] Speaker B: Others Preventing others from healing that too.
And then you have spirit.
[00:59:00] Speaker A: And then you have spirit, which basically to. To put it very simply, revolves around your abilities.
So I want to. I used to think that spirit was just like magic and it only had to do with things that were magic. But your abilities are all kind of considered spiritual. So even if, like for instance, the reason why it confused me in the beginning was because Abrams is a very melee heavy character. So his, his one is just. That would be easy to draw. You know, the fact that it's a spirit because it's, it's magic, it's draining life from someone.
But something like his charge, which is his two was whenever you press two, he goes forward and he charges someone. It's a form of crowd control that you can use. And if you slam them into the wall, then they are stunned for a period of time. It could be half a second up to a second. I've seen some crazy shit. But that to me took me a long time to realize because if I would have understood that doing that ability would have basically scaled with your spirit damage or like your spirit items, then I might have been able to catch on a little bit more quickly as to like why things affect the things that they do.
[01:00:09] Speaker B: Yes. There are also a bunch of base stats on certain characters that have spirit scaling on them. Like for example, Gray Tellin. He's an archer sniper, but he has spirit scaling on his base move speed. So if he gets a lot of spirit, he goes super fast and he's running around the map.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: Wow, I didn't know that.
Yeah.
[01:00:30] Speaker B: 7 has spirit scaling on his sprint. So whenever he's sprinting, he's extremely fast. If he has high spirit. Paige, she has her melee attacks, those scale off of spirit and so she can technically be a melee character just fine.
[01:00:48] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely true. If you're able to combine, you know, let's say, let's say I'm going to describe a build that I would typically go for with Abrams. Right. So because Abrams starts in the beginning with, I think it's a natural healing rate of 1 per second and you start off with like, like 500 or 700 in the game, it's really slow. So everyone's constantly regenerating health no matter what, at any given time, the moment that you stop shooting someone, they are regenerating likely, unless an ability was called where it stops them from healing. That being said, Abrams has the lowest to start off with whenever it comes to that regen. And so usually the first thing that I'll do is pick up Regen just so that way I can stay in the lane and just kind of make sure that if I am taking damage, which I likely am because of my adaptability, then I'm able to at least stay in the lane a little bit longer than I normally would be able to. Whenever it comes to like his melee powers, I'll start with Melee Lifesteal, which means that anytime that I punch someone, it takes a percentage of that damage. I think it's 60%, either 40 or 60 in the beginning. And it's adds that to your health, your direct health at that moment. And then it has a cooldown for a couple of seconds before that effect can take place again. This is a recurring trend for a lot of this stuff. So just wanted to throw that in there. If I am gonna be going straight melee and I just want all the damage to go into melee, I'm gonna be focusing on items that have weapon damage. And I may also, if I have the ability and the room for it, I'm also going to be trying to scale it with something called Spirit Strike, which basically allows your character to basically have scaled melee hits. So there's a couple of ways that you can earn spirit outside of the items that are in the game. They have little boxes, little jars everywhere. And you know these are incremental, like super like you would think.
Yeah, you would think they're small amounts. But like over the course of a 45 minute game that can really turn the tide. A lot of new players will ignore these boxes. If you, if this is something that you're going to be getting into, I would suggest just like if you see a box, if you're running by a box, just break it and then move. But when, when you have more spirit power, then it's going to just do a whole lot more damage. And then you pair that with Melee Lifesteal and now all of a sudden you're.
The percentage that Melee Lifesteal was originally taking is not just drawing from your initial hit with Melee Lifesteal. It is now compounding with the damage that you're doing because of the Spirit Strike and whatever spirit power that you already have.
So this, you can build this up to basically be where you can do a thousand hit points per swing per hit of a melee hit.
[01:03:39] Speaker B: It's huge.
[01:03:41] Speaker A: There's also something called Melee Charge is kind of like if you're a melee build, you're likely going to have something like this. But it does two things. It does increase your melee damage by a percentage. I think it's 25%. 50. 50. Oh, damn. Yeah. So 50%. And then the. I think the best part of that ability is that you also are able to extend the range at which your heavy melee travels.
So everyone has, like a certain set distance with their melee and heavy melee that can go a specific distance. Melee charge, basically, it's either. I'm gonna go ahead and say doubles. Would you think that'd be inaccurate?
[01:04:18] Speaker B: Yeah, you go so far.
[01:04:19] Speaker A: You go.
[01:04:20] Speaker B: You go far.
[01:04:21] Speaker A: So you can really close the distance with someone with a melee build with that kind of.
That kind of item.
[01:04:27] Speaker B: It can be pretty unexpected, too, because a heavy melee is. It gives you a very obvious telegraph. It's got a very particular sound that cuts through.
It's got a huge yellow particle that plays, and you can basically see it from a mile away if. If you're paying attention, but also if your attention is redirected on the million other things that are currently happening, you can usually get off a heavy melee in the middle of a fight, and that's a huge chunk of damage.
So you can sneak them in.
[01:04:57] Speaker A: Exactly. And just to briefly, you mentioned the word telegraph.
[01:05:03] Speaker B: Oh, you can also parry these things?
[01:05:06] Speaker A: Yes. Parrying is the bane of any melee build's existence.
[01:05:10] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[01:05:11] Speaker A: And every single character is embedded with the ability to parry. And the timing is really tricky to get down. I wanted to explain telegraph just real quick for those that may not understand telegraphing. Whenever. If someone is winding up a punch and you're able to understand that they're winding up a punch, that's called telegraphing.
Because you're understanding that they're about to perform an action before it actually happens. And they do that with, like, usually a visual or even a sound indicator. So just to briefly explain that pairing. Pairing will fuck you so hard because you're dead if you get parried. If you get parried. That's right. Someone that plays Abrams a lot. I have to basically wind up my punch, and then I have to determine whether or not the character in front of me has either already used their parry within the last five seconds. Because if you miss, if. If someone hits someone hits parry and then they don't get hit, it doesn't come back for a certain amount of seconds. So I can take advantage of them at that point. If they. I miss their parry, if that makes sense.
[01:06:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:06:11] Speaker A: Or if they do parry me, then I am stunned for, like, long time.
[01:06:16] Speaker B: It's like three or four seconds.
[01:06:19] Speaker A: It's a lot.
[01:06:20] Speaker B: So I think it's like two or three I don't know.
[01:06:23] Speaker A: Yeah. In the. In the laning phase, a common occurrence is that, like, if I am doing this melee build and then I get parried, what ends up happening almost every single time is that the two people in that lane, the opposing team, will just converge on me and just beat the shit out of me, just melee punch me. Because I'm down for that long, and unless Painter is there to bail me out, I'm pretty much dead. There's just no way that I'm gonna be able to do that because you're completely powerless in that moment. That's another one of those things where I'm just like, this is bullshit. But it's also a consequence sequence of poor execution. I was gonna say poor planning, but no. The thing is, though, is that, like, with your melee ability, you can swing that thing in any direction. It used to be a lot more snappy. Snappy. And like, let's say that I'm facing the direction in front of me. If I hit melee and I hold melee and I'm about to charge it, I could feasibly turn directly around and just go the other way. Now, the way that they have it is. Is on a curve. So basically, you can't just do that. You can't just, like, look one way, start a melee, and then just go 180 behind you. You have to react to that curve.
[01:07:33] Speaker B: So, yes, limited turn radius is now in place for melee attacks, which makes it harder to fake them out to bait out that parry.
[01:07:44] Speaker A: Exactly. But there.
[01:07:45] Speaker B: There are several items that you can use to cancel your heavy melee so that all you're doing is telegraphing one and you're not actually executing the heavy melee. That's a good way to bait out a parry too, but it's a. It's a fun, fun little mini game. The melee system, I love it a lot. You can play it on any character. Any character has some sort of path to become a melee character. Even Haste, who can sleep dagger you and then just punch you right after that because you're slept and you cannot parry.
[01:08:21] Speaker A: And that's. That's the interesting thing about having builds, is that way is that you can subvert expectations.
I'm gonna.
[01:08:29] Speaker B: Psychological game.
[01:08:30] Speaker A: I was gonna say. I'll let you talk about that because you do a lot of that in your builds.
[01:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah, so. So Ivy is. I play Ivy in all kinds of builds. Support gun.
[01:08:38] Speaker A: She's a.
[01:08:39] Speaker B: She's a small gargoyle that has a very cutesy voice actor. She has a large area of effect Damage over time. Grenade. She has a buff for her teammate to increase their fire rate and remove a movement penalty after firing. And also has an invincibility ability called Stone Form. And like I said earlier, she can fly her enemies out. I mean, she can fly her allies out as well as herself of any danger. And so it's not really.
It's like a support character or a spirit based character, but sometimes I can play her melee, which is. Yeah, subverting expectations. You don't think Ivy is going to run up to you and punch you for that amount of damage. And so that in and of itself gives me a free punch. And then either they panic parry, or they expect another punch, but her stone form allows me to cancel that punch. And so already I'm guaranteed a few punches through psychology and just being Ivy and having the stone form cancel the bait out of parry.
[01:09:48] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:09:49] Speaker B: But that the variety of builds that Ivy can use, any character really, it keeps it interesting. I don't know what I'm going to build. Whenever I'm going into a game as Ivy, I watch how the players play. I look at their team comp. I see what would be most effective, and I go for it.
[01:10:06] Speaker A: Right. Which. Which kind of tells you the difference between someone like me who has a general build in mind, something that I like my. My go to, and then I will adapt certain things about the build depending on like what I'm facing sometimes. Sometimes, yeah.
Versus like, speaking to your point earlier about Ivy, you're not expecting an Ivy to have like a melee build.
When you see Abrams, you are typically expecting that character to have some sort of melee build, so you're anticipating higher damage from them and so you are preparing for that. I guess the. The equivalent subversion of that would either be like running a spirit, where I have more damage outputting to my abilities, or even just using my gun, which is. It's only good at close range. So that's the other thing that kind of makes Abrams a. How would I say it? Like, it's specific in its. In its usage. Like you have to be able to get close to your opponent in order to do some, like, actually meaningful damage. But if, let's say, for instance, with my shotgun pistol, I get a item that's. That's called long range. Even if you know the character is a little bit farther away, the damage fall off, which occurs whenever an opposing player is farther away from you versus closer to you. There's a. There's a curve that occurs there that if they're closer to you and you shoot them, you do more damage. If they're farther away, you do less, all the way down to like 1hp or 0hp if you're just too far. And if I use long range, then I can still do effective damage at a pretty good range. And so if I pair that with weapon damage and I pair that with maybe I still need to get a little bit closer. So I get an item like Colossus where it gives me an egregious amount of health. It's expensive, so it's worth it. It's an expensive amount of souls that you would use. But these are all things that you have to think about whenever you're making micro and macro decisions in the game. So is it worth it to subvert the character if it means that, or the opposing team expectations?
If you are challenging, what is to be expected of your character? Like Abrams, Melee, Gun Abrams. And so you'll actually hear the term, you know, with Abrams as an example. Gun Abrams, Melee Abrams, spirit Abrams. And then I don't really hear like Vitality Abrams, but you would just call him a tanky. Tanky character. He's super tanky.
[01:12:32] Speaker B: And sometimes it's ability based, like, this is an infernal resilience Abrams or this is an Alt Abrams.
[01:12:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, just items where, like, it's focused on one certain ability to maximize its potential. It's. It's an interesting game. Yeah.
[01:12:48] Speaker B: All avenues.
[01:12:50] Speaker A: There's so many things, so many more things that we could talk about. I kind of want to end it here.
[01:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So I kind of want to play a game.
[01:12:57] Speaker A: I kind of want to play a game too. So if you want to play the game yourself, I would probably see if you can find a thread on Reddit that's allowing for invites. Maybe you have a friend that's already playing Deadlock. They would have to. An easiest way would be for them to invite you. We need more players.
Yeah.
[01:13:14] Speaker B: And we're getting more.
[01:13:16] Speaker A: We're getting more. And the game has been recently updated to have a lot of new exciting changes, including new characters that you can play whenever things like that happen. It does kind of even the playing field for everyone in that sense. So it is a good time. I think anytime's a good time. But get to know the game, really. See if you can build your own community from that. I want, personally, I really want Deadlock to be successful because it's. It's one of those games that I think is just doing something fresh for the first time in a long time. And of course It's Valve. So the quality control that I expect from this game is pretty much like at its highest level, which they do a lot of things to. To mitigate any sort of like challenges that you may occur, like any bugs or anything like that. It is still in play testing, so that is something you have to remember.
[01:13:59] Speaker B: But the polish is showing for sure.
[01:14:02] Speaker A: You would not. You would think that they would have released this game about a year ago if you play it now versus what it was. It's actually insane. Between the art, the new characters, the abilities, the balancing of the characters and their abilities and. And so many other things, you can.
[01:14:20] Speaker B: Tell it's the culmination of like Val's experience over the years creating games and like being in the industry and seeing what is successful, putting it all together and in creating. I want to play a game, dude.
[01:14:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
Leave it to Valve to challenge like you know, preconceptions of what games should be now and just trying something new.
[01:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:14:44] Speaker A: Which if, you know, if for some reason the AAA developer is listening, I would just challenge you to really try something new. Don't try it from like a story perspective. Try it from a gameplay mechanics perspective and see if you can make something interesting and make a story around that mechanic. You know, that's just a.
I don't, you know.
[01:15:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:05] Speaker A: Something I want to put out there.
[01:15:06] Speaker B: Even then, even if it's like not something new like Deadlock, I think is more of like a mashup of ideas rather than like to make something new rather than like just something completely different.
[01:15:18] Speaker A: That's a good point.
[01:15:19] Speaker B: Even if you just take a mashup, like try it out.
[01:15:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:23] Speaker B: I love to see this kind of.
[01:15:24] Speaker A: Stuff, invest in new ideas because like, you know, just a quick tidbit, more remasters, more games that have been like remade are seeing more success than some of the newer IPs that have been releasing lately.
I think it's important to keep that drive for innovation like Deadlock has been for us and just, just open your mind a little bit more. And I promise you, if you make.
If you have the right people that are great at making new ideas and you allow them to experiment with those ideas, then I promise you your player base will appreciate that and they're gonna love that you're just trying something new.
[01:16:07] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:16:07] Speaker A: So even if it's weird, even if it sucks, I still. There's some games out there that kind of suck, but I still hold in high regard because of how daring it was. Most of them taking place in the PS2 area. But that being said, this is, this has been a side quest, checking out Deadlock again. I'm going to encourage you to check it out. You'll find us here at Critical Debuff on Spotify, any, any place where you listen to podcasts. And be sure to let us know your questions. I mean, like, you know, I consider Painter an expert at this point. I would say I'm pretty adept. We would love to hear your thoughts and like, any criticisms that you about the game, things that you would like to see. I'm sure Valve would like to see that, too.
And yeah, let us know, try the game. Let us know what you think. And I hope to see you out there. Maybe you'll kill me there. A high likelihood of that.
[01:16:56] Speaker B: I'll see you in lane, y'.
[01:16:57] Speaker A: All. See ya. Have a good one.
[01:16:59] Speaker B: Critical Deb.
