Ideas to get people back into the game and to make the game better.

[supremejester28]

That's a really cool fanfic you got there. Do you have a name for those characters who call themselves rockstars? I've always loved when people tell me about their delusion and make full stories with vibrant worldbuilding for them.

TL;DR wahhh wahhh wahhh...

That person wrote an entire fanfiction franchise instead of playtesting or touching grass.
Shit's crazy

 

[Cetsuo]

As someone who studies game design, I'm gonna tell you this: you don't understand the time it takes to make a game and perfect it. So yes, the team will give you what they need to add to the game based on their own vision of it, not what you are demanding. Catering to your whining will only make other people complain for xyz reasons. There's no winning. You aren't the ensemble of the playerbase. So yes, they will focus on what they've studied and know to do for the game.

People really believe that making a game is sitting in front of a computer and press the "make game" button a few times. I remember a comment saying that porting destiny 2 to unreal would take "at most a few months"

 

[Hauso]

Even the devs dont care anymore :/
They used to give us feedback on discord. Now its just dead deadlock

 

[Ragnaman]

There is a big difference. In unrated, I can calmly play for fun, test a new build that may not work. I can't do that in rated.

Why would you test anything in unranked ? Test in sandbox and vs bots.
How are unranked players worse than ranked ? Its a silly stupid mental bug. Both systems use same backend to rank players, only one is named differently. Its completely "emotional" aspect that makes people sweat in ranked, just because its named "ranked".

 

[Propane]

Why would you test anything in unranked ? Test in sandbox and vs bots.
How are unranked players worse than ranked ? Its a silly stupid mental bug. Both systems use same backend to rank players, only one is named differently. Its completely "emotional" aspect that makes people sweat in ranked, just because its named "ranked".

1) vs. bots or sandbox has no bearing on actual gameplay and cannot effectively be used to test builds beyond damage output
2) unranked attracts a different type of person than ranked does, ranked is obviously going to be super sweaty and unranked usually a little more chill, by separating and then merging the queues they put the sweaty types into that competitive mindset and then smashed them back in with people who are just messing around for fun. This has proven to be miserable for everyone involved and is likely responsible for the death spiral of poor match quality -> people quit -> even poorer match quality -> more people quit

the casual mode held most of deadlocks charm for me, I didn't have to worry about win/loss and could just do whatever and have fun, at this point I do not believe there's a way to get that back without somehow attracting more players to the playtest.. on that note just because it is a game in alpha and a playtest doesn't mean the criticism is somehow invalid, people need to stop saying that because it just makes them look stupid

 

[BossBaragon]

1) vs. bots or sandbox has no bearing on actual gameplay and cannot effectively be used to test builds beyond damage output
2) unranked attracts a different type of person than ranked does, ranked is obviously going to be super sweaty and unranked usually a little more chill, by separating and then merging the queues they put the sweaty types into that competitive mindset and then smashed them back in with people who are just messing around for fun. This has proven to be miserable for everyone involved and is likely responsible for the death spiral of poor match quality -> people quit -> even poorer match quality -> more people quit

the casual mode held most of deadlocks charm for me, I didn't have to worry about win/loss and could just do whatever and have fun, at this point I do not believe there's a way to get that back without somehow attracting more players to the playtest.. on that note just because it is a game in alpha and a playtest doesn't mean the criticism is somehow invalid, people need to stop saying that because it just makes them look stupid

I mean, I get it, I'm more on the casual side (tho I like sweating a bit). But as testers, your enjoyment is not prioritized; it's the testing that's prioritized. Having two seperate queues that use the same exact system just to split the casuals from the sweats is stupid, because you're allowed to sweat in non-ranked games, and you're allowed to be casual in ranked games as well.

If you're having a rough time, just mute the sweaty people and focus on your own gameplay. You're here to test the game, and your enjoyment is an added bonus of that. If you aren't enjoying it, then you'll have to come back later, when the game is actually released.

 

[utilitarism]

I mean, I get it, I'm more on the casual side (tho I like sweating a bit). But as testers, your enjoyment is not prioritized; it's the testing that's prioritized. Having two seperate queues that use the same exact system just to split the casuals from the sweats is stupid, because you're allowed to sweat in non-ranked games, and you're allowed to be casual in ranked games as well.

If you're having a rough time, just mute the sweaty people and focus on your own gameplay. You're here to test the game, and your enjoyment is an added bonus of that. If you aren't enjoying it, then you'll have to come back later, when the game is actually released.

Having two separate queues also allows to have two different "tests environments" which also allow to better understand what the two crowds are more likely to do differently, and it's interesting data to compare.
Also it helps to have a saner testing atmosphere as deadlock is extremely sweaty by nature, as it limits the expectations when you're heading in the modes (something solo command and competitive box are bad at). The problem is probably though ranked was introduced a bit too soon, and they're trying to cope (poorly from my perspective) with the aftermath of these changes.

Things are not black and white, same for the enjoyment versus testing. Since we're doing this testing for free, it has to be somewhat enjoyable. It's has to be a win-win: giving valve humongous amount of data while having a fun experience. The matchmaking issues makes the game less fun, which prompt less people to play, which lead to imbalances and poor quality of data to continue building the game, so i definitely understand the vocal complaints since a month and a half.

 

[hlatiful96]

First you have to remove low priority matchmaking punishment. Coz that is absurd for a game that doesn't have 30k player base. I got ban for your server issue then I couldn't find match to come out of low priority punishment. either high ping like 300 or ppl leaving and we are losing. So I am not playing for over 2 weeks. Add hero pick. + only make 2 split high and low mmr and find a way to shuffle them equally despite hero pick. coz hero pick doesn't matter on low or mid mmr. add a better tutorial for new comers and force them to play against bot until lvl 10

 

[BossBaragon]

Having two separate queues also allows to have two different "tests environments" which also allow to better understand what the two crowds are more likely to do differently, and it's interesting data to compare.
Also it helps to have a saner testing atmosphere as deadlock is extremely sweaty by nature, as it limits the expectations when you're heading in the modes (something solo command and competitive box are bad at). The problem is probably though ranked was introduced a bit too soon, and they're trying to cope (poorly from my perspective) with the aftermath of these changes.

Things are not black and white, same for the enjoyment versus testing. Since we're doing this testing for free, it has to be somewhat enjoyable. It's has to be a win-win: giving valve humongous amount of data while having a fun experience. The matchmaking issues makes the game less fun, which prompt less people to play, which lead to imbalances and poor quality of data to continue building the game, so i definitely understand the vocal complaints since a month and a half.

They aren't testing the crowd, they're testing the general features. In reality, the hypersweat community is generally the least useful when it comes to testing, because they are most of the time playing in predictable ways that the devs can already calculate. It's the weirder people that provide useful data through weird builds and interactions.

People that look up guides and only follow the meta are the least useful for testing data as all they do is contribute moreso to winrate% based stuff, and well, balance changes aren't as useful in a game that's unreleased and whose meta shift so much every few patches. This will be more useful when the game is properly out and more stable so they can adjust the heroes accordingly, but as of now the efficiency of them is kind of a nothingburger, because balance data from a month ago could be completely irrelevant to the state of the game a month after.

The reality is that people are acting like this is League and are feeling entitled to playing it the way they want. But a normal game does not have ult reworks every 2 weeks. You aren't meant to be sweaty in a game that changes every 2 week.

You are indeed testing for free, but you aren't hired to do this. If you dislike the current state of the game, you'll just have to wait until release. I know plenty of people, me included, who enjoys testing for the sake of it.

 

[Cetsuo]

They aren't testing the crowd, they're testing the general features. In reality, the hypersweat community is generally the least useful when it comes to testing, because they are most of the time playing in predictable ways that the devs can already calculate. It's the weirder people that provide useful data through weird builds and interactions.

People that look up guides and only follow the meta are the least useful for testing data as all they do is contribute moreso to winrate% based stuff, and well, balance changes aren't as useful in a game that's unreleased and whose meta shift so much every few patches. This will be more useful when the game is properly out and more stable so they can adjust the heroes accordingly, but as of now the efficiency of them is kind of a nothingburger, because balance data from a month ago could be completely irrelevant to the state of the game a month after.

The reality is that people are acting like this is League and are feeling entitled to playing it the way they want. But a normal game does not have ult reworks every 2 weeks. You aren't meant to be sweaty in a game that changes every 2 week.

You are indeed testing for free, but you aren't hired to do this. If you dislike the current state of the game, you'll just have to wait until release. I know plenty of people, me included, who enjoys testing for the sake of it.

+1. feels like playing a new game every week the way the features change and are reimplemented. having a chance to try out new synergies or figure out new stuff is a joy in itself.

 

[Ragnaman]

1) vs. bots or sandbox has no bearing on actual gameplay and cannot effectively be used to test builds beyond damage output
2) unranked attracts a different type of person than ranked does, ranked is obviously going to be super sweaty and unranked usually a little more chill, by separating and then merging the queues they put the sweaty types into that competitive mindset and then smashed them back in with people who are just messing around for fun. This has proven to be miserable for everyone involved and is likely responsible for the death spiral of poor match quality -> people quit -> even poorer match quality -> more people quit

the casual mode held most of deadlocks charm for me, I didn't have to worry about win/loss and could just do whatever and have fun, at this point I do not believe there's a way to get that back without somehow attracting more players to the playtest.. on that note just because it is a game in alpha and a playtest doesn't mean the criticism is somehow invalid, people need to stop saying that because it just makes them look stupid

in 10y of dota2 casual matchmaking, i have never experienced players who dont want to win. "Attracts a different type of person" is a moot point. The natural ranked vs unranked matchmaking is the rank itself, the people with higher rank are more competitive and skilled, simple as that.

To split the playerbase in two is just stupid. Plenty of fools in ranked and plenty of pros in unranked...so whats the point to have ranked and unranked, just play the game and climb if you want your "ranked".

 

[Propane]

in 10y of dota2 casual matchmaking, i have never experienced players who dont want to win. "Attracts a different type of person" is a moot point. The natural ranked vs unranked matchmaking is the rank itself, the people with higher rank are more competitive and skilled, simple as that.

To split the playerbase in two is just stupid. Plenty of fools in ranked and plenty of pros in unranked...so whats the point to have ranked and unranked, just play the game and climb if you want your "ranked".

all you're doing here is throwing doubt on your own experience, there is 100% a difference between people who play casually and people who take the game super seriously and ignoring that difference is exactly how you end up where we are right now.

 

[Propane]

They aren't testing the crowd, they're testing the general features. In reality, the hypersweat community is generally the least useful when it comes to testing, because they are most of the time playing in predictable ways that the devs can already calculate. It's the weirder people that provide useful data through weird builds and interactions.

the problem is the players that do these weird things are actively pushed out by the removal of a casual queue, if I queue up a game to build some silly shit that I think is fun I will a. not have fun, and b. get flamed by my team... this is actually exactly what is taking the fun out of the game for me rn, I feel like if I want any hope at all of having a decent or fun match I have to one trick a hero I'm good at and build meta otherwise I'll just get curb stomped every single game

back before ranked came out I had a blast playing melee haze (full melee build like colossus and lifestrike), the way the game is now there is no way I could do that or any other silly off-meta build. I think this is in part due to the queue split and then merge but also just the result of insane powercreep (hint: balancing by making every hero op is not a good method)

 

[utilitarism]

They aren't testing the crowd, they're testing the general features. In reality, the hypersweat community is generally the least useful when it comes to testing, because they are most of the time playing in predictable ways that the devs can already calculate. It's the weirder people that provide useful data through weird builds and interactions.

People that look up guides and only follow the meta are the least useful for testing data as all they do is contribute moreso to winrate% based stuff, and well, balance changes aren't as useful in a game that's unreleased and whose meta shift so much every few patches. This will be more useful when the game is properly out and more stable so they can adjust the heroes accordingly, but as of now the efficiency of them is kind of a nothingburger, because balance data from a month ago could be completely irrelevant to the state of the game a month after.

The reality is that people are acting like this is League and are feeling entitled to playing it the way they want. But a normal game does not have ult reworks every 2 weeks. You aren't meant to be sweaty in a game that changes every 2 week.

You are indeed testing for free, but you aren't hired to do this. If you dislike the current state of the game, you'll just have to wait until release. I know plenty of people, me included, who enjoys testing for the sake of it.

Personally speaking, i enjoy testing as well, i've got no problem with that as i find the gameplay interesting. Though, I'm a bit concerned with how bad the new player experience is and the matchmaking as it provides noisy data, which is not great to build the game.

I would disagree with your first point: hypersweats also push the limit testing as they search for the most efficient/broken interactions. Again things are not black and white: different kind of players contribute differently to the testing. And the merging was probably not a good idea in this regard.

"you aren't meant to be sweaty in a game that changes every 2 weeks" I mean, have you seen deadlock concept ? it is the incarnation of sweatiness, it's normal that it caters to that kind of players, even if taking the game as a released product is a bit silly.

 

[BossBaragon]

the problem is the players that do these weird things are actively pushed out by the removal of a casual queue, if I queue up a game to build some silly shit that I think is fun I will a. not have fun, and b. get flamed by my team... this is actually exactly what is taking the fun out of the game for me rn, I feel like if I want any hope at all of having a decent or fun match I have to one trick a hero I'm good at and build meta otherwise I'll just get curb stomped every single game

back before ranked came out I had a blast playing melee haze (full melee build like colossus and lifestrike), the way the game is now there is no way I could do that or any other silly off-meta build. I think this is in part due to the queue split and then merge but also just the result of insane powercreep (hint: balancing by making every hero op is not a good method)

Like I said I get it. Yesterday I tried a build for the first time and it wasn't going too well, and one of my teammates got toxic. What did I do? I simply muted them and reported them at the end of the game. So should you. You aren't punished at all for this.

Further proof: when it comes to league of legends, my main is Bruiser Ahri, and I exclusively play in PBE, a server with no ranked mode. It is the epitome of a "casual server". And yet, I constantly meet toxic people that will flame me if I do bad.

Casual or no casual won't change the fact that people will flame you. Instead of focusing on a seperate queue, report the toxic people. The terms of playing this game is very simple: don't be toxic. You are allowed to experiment and even encouraged as this is a testing grounds. Testing weird builds can uncover bugs and discover broken strats that can be valuable data to the dev team.

 

[BossBaragon]

I would disagree with your first point: hypersweats also push the limit testing as they search for the most efficient/broken interactions.

While some do, you cannot pretend like the vast majority of sweats simply pull up mobalytics and look at the best builds and test absolutely nothing new to the game. Additionally, just from experience from the discord server from people that were highly placed and that also did builds, these type of people understand what experimentation is, and don't get toxic at people for playing badly or experimenting on their own.

The argument almost gets contradictory, you should go to the "casual mode" to experiment, but then hypersweats also experiment?

Again things are not black and white: different kind of players contribute differently to the testing.

They aren't! Sweats and people that play normally aren't useless to testing; they simply just reaffirm existing data, and then cause new "odd" data to conflict against it, allowing many kinds of tests and weird interactions. If you only play X in a specific way, you'll not only provide some data on matchup stuff, but also what happens when you encounter other builds, how they should react, everything that needs to be tested.

The source of most of the interesting data DOES come from people that do weirder builds though, especially when said builds work: because it makes the dev have to look at something they weren't particularly expecting.

And the merging was probably not a good idea in this regard.

No, that's a pretty bad take. The way people talk about the merge, you'd think "normal" deadlock was just 12 people smoking weed and snorting cocaine while lazily moving around the map taking nothing seriously, while "ranked" deadlock was 12 hypersweats who haven't slept for 7 days waiting for the game to start, doing nothing but training all day long.

This doesn't happen. There are chill people who play in ranked. There are hypersweats who play in casual. What's stopping the highest ranked deadlocker from hopping in a "casual" match? What's stopping a bad player from playing in ranked?

You also talk about how "different players contribute differently to testing", why should we then separate them? It's more data for people of different "mindset" to clash. Considering the above, you literally have no way to prevent skilled sweaty people from getting into casual. So what do you do, you just ignore it?

Should we add casual and ranked back and then make them take an oath to only play casually and not sweat too much when playing normals? :| Ranked being there didn't stop me from playing Spirit Haze either, and even if it was back, it wouldn't stop me from doing so any more than now.

The merge was made because as of now, the two system are literally just the same. They use the exact same grading. It's literally only a mindset situation, nothing else.

"you aren't meant to be sweaty in a game that changes every 2 weeks" I mean, have you seen deadlock concept ? it is the incarnation of sweatiness, it's normal that it caters to that kind of players, even if taking the game as a released product is a bit silly.

You are allowed to sweat. It's normal to want to sweat. But the game is not designed currently for you to sweat. It caters to these kind of players because they are taking what it is and making it into what they want it to be. And I get it, I kinda sweat too, to an extent.

But me sweating does not mean the game is build to sweat as of now. The game currently is not catering to hypersweats, because if it was, it would have a ranked queue. It's as simple as that.

 

[Propane]

Like I said I get it. Yesterday I tried a build for the first time and it wasn't going too well, and one of my teammates got toxic. What did I do? I simply muted them and reported them at the end of the game. So should you. You aren't punished at all for this.

Further proof: when it comes to league of legends, my main is Bruiser Ahri, and I exclusively play in PBE, a server with no ranked mode. It is the epitome of a "casual server". And yet, I constantly meet toxic people that will flame me if I do bad.

Casual or no casual won't change the fact that people will flame you. Instead of focusing on a seperate queue, report the toxic people. The terms of playing this game is very simple: don't be toxic. You are allowed to experiment and even encouraged as this is a testing grounds. Testing weird builds can uncover bugs and discover broken strats that can be valuable data to the dev team.

toxicity is not the root of the issue though it's just a side effect, one that doesn't particularly bug me, what bugs me is that it's becoming more and more difficult to do even remotely well on any of these silly off-meta builds, you either play these heros the way they're intended or you lose the game.

also to address your above comment, the game IS catering to hypersweats since the only option is technically ranked and sweaty players are always going to dominate casual players (and neither will enjoy the game in the process)

 

[BossBaragon]

Sorry to say but this IS a skill issue. And this is coming from someone who exclusively plays Melee Spirit Haze. In League, my main were Bruiser Ahri, ADC Lulu, and AP Tahm Kench. I'm someone who revels in silly off meta builds.

what bugs me is that it's becoming more and more difficult to do even remotely well on any of these silly off-meta builds, you either play these heros the way they're intended or you lose the game.

Deadlock has been one of the MOST generous game in terms of off-meta builds. Characters have a very "everyone is OP" aspect to it. Literally every character can play Spirit or Weapon to an extent. Pretending like that's not the case is just... not it. The only case where you would "lose the game" because of your build would be in the highest tiers possible.

Again, you can't pretend like there aren't sweats in regular games. I know that from experience from playing in the PBE server of league of legends. It's literally a test server with no ranked, and yet I've met toxic, sweaty people all the time.

It's in the game's very rules that you must strive to win. Nothing wrong with experimenting obviously, but you can't pretend that just because you're playing normal, that no one cares about winning, everyone's doing ultimate bravery, dancing at the midboss, and not caring about winning.

If you lose often, it's not because of your builds. It's just that you're outmatched. Your ranking will go down eventually (I would know, mine also has), and you'll end up in a more comfortable bracket at some point.

also to address your above comment, the game IS catering to hypersweats since the only option is technically ranked and sweaty players are always going to dominate casual players (and neither will enjoy the game in the process)

As I mentioned: if the game was catering to hypersweat, there would be a ranked mode. To cater to something means to provide and serve, and Deadlock clearly isn't "serving" hypersweats by the removal of ranked.

As mentioned, this is a test server, and BOTH queues use the same system. Both queues had one goal: winning the game. As a result, the queues were split for no real reasons. As some other person has mentioned, it's a mental bug.

 

[Ragnaman]

Its a competitive game, strictly PvP, sweating is its core feature, what exactly are you expecting here, doing excel sheet trolling until you unlock a mysterious ability to dunk on plebs with your incredible brain fungus ? Get out of here.
You can do plenty of chill nonsweaty gaming using your 300IQ brain with chars like Geist and Dynamo, sure you can go bullets and sweat, but you can just nonchalantly be a game winner by pressing 4 when planets align.

OR, get some friends and do a closed lobby, altho, this is harder to do than reaching eternus probably.

 

[Propane]

Its a competitive game, strictly PvP, sweating is its core feature, what exactly are you expecting here, doing excel sheet trolling until you unlock a mysterious ability to dunk on plebs with your incredible brain fungus ? Get out of here.
You can do plenty of chill nonsweaty gaming using your 300IQ brain with chars like Geist and Dynamo, sure you can go bullets and sweat, but you can just nonchalantly be a game winner by pressing 4 when planets align.

OR, get some friends and do a closed lobby, altho, this is harder to do than reaching eternus probably.

casual doesn't just mean easy, it's a whole different vibe

there are people who play to have fun and there are people who play to win, while the two are not mutually exclusive I'm not quite sure how people are oblivious to this divide

if I queue a game with no care to win and just want to screw around with the heros and items (which I do frequently) there really should be a queue for that because the type of person that plays to win is probably not going to have fun in the same lobby.. the same goes the opposite direction as well.

when we had a dedicated ranked queue there was a lot more space to screw around in casual which I really enjoyed, I'd sweat my ass off in ranked for 2 or 3 games and then go do something silly in casual after running out of steam

Sorry to say but this IS a skill issue. And this is coming from someone who exclusively plays Melee Spirit Haze. In League, my main were Bruiser Ahri, ADC Lulu, and AP Tahm Kench. I'm someone who revels in silly off meta builds.

Deadlock has been one of the MOST generous game in terms of off-meta builds. Characters have a very "everyone is OP" aspect to it. Literally every character can play Spirit or Weapon to an extent. Pretending like that's not the case is just... not it. The only case where you would "lose the game" because of your build would be in the highest tiers possible.

Again, you can't pretend like there aren't sweats in regular games. I know that from experience from playing in the PBE server of league of legends. It's literally a test server with no ranked, and yet I've met toxic, sweaty people all the time.

also longer format games (league) are generally much more friendly to off-meta builds, having more time to farm and scale gives off-meta builds an opportunity to 'come online'.. not to mention league is frankly less of a team game than deadlock so it's not particularly hard to carry someone using an only semi-viable build.... maybe if you played a region with ranked you'd understand the points I'm making ;p
-diamond 2 peak, soloq support only