Deadlock

[kuhla]

I like the game and I kind of want to play the game but I don't have fun playing the game.

Having 20+ heroes and keeping track of what they are doing/can do is not easy but I feel it's manageable.

Denying souls also feels manageable even though it's annoying.

Map awareness and responding to pings is actually something I sort of enjoy in games.

It's the items. I hate buying items. I hate buying them in some special order across multiple categories. I just don't use active items at all. They are so powerful that managing them seems like another game just sitting on top of the game you are playing. I feel the game would be better without items.

[Malaphax]

The onboarding of any MOBA is brutal.  Deadlock obfuscates this because people see the shooting mechanics and think that means the traditional MOBA mechanics are less important (it's the reverse).  

I'm not an expert on itemization and I still generally select a highly rated build and try to follow it because I don't want to be sitting at the shop reading - I want to quickly buy and get back into the action.  This is a bit lazy and I probably need to play a couple of games where I just resign myself to use the shop without a build to get more comfortable.  

Some things I can recommend - pick a limited number of heroes to play.  I understand it's fun to mix things up but playing more than 2-3 heroes is probably going to slow your ability to refine some of the other mechanical elements.  I've tried most of the heroes at this point just to get an idea for them mechanically, but I'll probably try to winnow down my selection moving forward so I can work on them and get better.  

From a mechanical standpoint I disagree about removing the items.  While the abilities have unique increases with levels - not just bigger numbers - I don't think that would be enough.  If this game didn't have items and build paths it would just be a hero shooter with a complicated objective system.  I may not have played overwatch in quite a while, but I recall towards the end it was almost required for people to change heroes mid-match to adapt to the enemy team and help hard counter what was giving you issues.  It would also mean every hero had an optimal way to play, making the game far more rock paper scissors with certain heroes being hard counters to others.  Since the game currently doesn't have a pick/ban/draft system you could see games lost at the hero select screen.  

I'm not great with active items in this game, but some of them are clearly meant to help shore up hero deficiencies or allow you to overcome certain hard counters.  Imagine being a tank hero that keeps getting blown up by enemy focus fire - you buy metal skin (short immunity to bullets/melee) and now you can live longer and do your job of disrupting the enemy team without instantly exploding.  Or if you hate Vindicta (ghost lady) you buy knockdown to drop her ass out of the sky so you can kill her and make her life miserable.  
There's also a limit to 4 active items, so you have a max of 4 abilities, 4 active items, and the moving/shooting - which is still overwhelming but not impossible.  

I like this guy's videos about deadlock, his breakdown on the item shop is something I understand but need to put into practice.  

I will say one thing about this game that's very distinct from other MOBAs is the power of split-pushing.  If 5 teammates are fighting and 1 person goes and pushes a lane, that builds huge advantages and can even result in winning games - far more than League or Dota.  Every hero can split-push and there are absolutely times when that's the right call, even if that's less fun than joining in the big teamfight.  

Overall, I like this game, but there's some lingering PTSD from having played other MOBAs.  I feel like they've been patching and tweaking numbers very frequently, but they'll also need to release new heroes regularly to keep up the interest that they've generated - especially if they hope to have any semblance of a "casual" audience.