I'm going to go through each of the specific major changes that broke Deadlock last patch and explain why this has ruined the game:
So what do I suggest they do to fix these problems?
It goes without saying that what is considered a satisfying gameplay loop is subjective. My belief is that when it comes to team based competitive games two elements of game design are essential:
- Troopers no longer change soul sharing rules after laning phase ends, which is at 8 minutes. (meaning 2 heroes don't split souls past 8 minutes)
- Any solo laner can now be grouped on by two players with the two players receiving no Soul penalty. This means you are at the mercy of your teammates responding appropriately.
- Prior to this, you could concede the objective, but focus on last hitting knowing you were generating double the Souls as compensation for the enemy grouping on you.
- Whenever there's a large wave pushing to your side you now need to wait there for a teammate to join you to pick up the wave or there will literally be 1000+ Souls lost due to farming it solo.
- In ranked/non-premade games this means you have to just sit and wait at waves for teammates to join you or they simply don't listen to comms in which case you fall behind the enemy that has teammates that do listen. Even in coordinated play, now having to sit at waves afk is an incredibly boring gameplay loop.
- This has now made the jungle effectively pointless. Optimal play is to have 2 players in each lane. Since there's 4 lanes, and only 6 players, it means there's always 2 players missing from optimal allocation in each lane.
- This causes the optimal strategy to push, then rotate singular players to non-pushed lanes to duo farm, and repeat. This gives such a small timing window to farm the jungle that it's essentially done to gain an incredibly miniscule Soul advantage that's negligible(I'll explain why later).
- This is assuming optimal play, which there isn't in the average lobby, causing you to just be running between lanes never having a timing window to even farm the Jungle unless you want to do sub-optimal Soul generation with no map pressure.
- Split pushing and side lane pressure is now pointless. If the enemy is a premade and/or has better coordination in ranked, you now have no counterplay through side lane pressure to punish them over-grouping.
- I'll give an example: let's say an enemy allocates 4 players to make a pick on the right side of the map. Last patch you could punish by pressuring the left side. However, now, the enemy can just leave 2 players on the right lane, then send 2 to the nearby lane beside it, and be farming fully efficiently, giving you no time to punish by solo farming/pressuring. Before, they'd have to spread out all 4 players into either 4 lanes, or 2 in solo lanes and 2 in the jungle, which is time consuming, inefficient, and difficult to execute.
- Not to mention, 2 players pressuring a lane can take any objective faster than you can solo anyways. Before, the tradeoff was Soul efficiently, now, it's simply better, causing any solo play to be basically pointless and nearly always a worse play.
- In summary, Soul generation no longer has any individual agency. Since duo farming a lane dominates all other Soul generation, games are heavily decided by which team is doing this better, which comes down to coordination and teammates - giving you very little agency over the outcome of the game as an individual.
- Hero Kill gold increased from 150->1400 to 175->2000 (from 0 min to 45 min)
- Kill Gold is so high into the mid to late game it has now made any lead generated through the early to mid game effectively pointless.
- Unless you can literally play perfect and never die you will give up so much gold to the enemy when combined with the bounty system that it makes whatever lead you generated up until that point, well, pointless.
- It also doesn't matter if you as an individual play perfect, as teammates dying injects enough gold to make any lead you generated not enough to compensate.
- Kill Gold being so high, combined with duo lane farming, means deathballing(grouping as 4-6 players and roaming the map) dominates non-pro games where there isn't good enough coordination to do optimal duo lane farming.
- This is because you are rewarded so heavily for kills that simply grouping, getting a kill or two, into then dispersing into duo lane farming the 2 nearby lanes has no counterplay for individual players. You can't split push to punish, you can't out macro through better farm efficiency with lanes+jungle, you simply fall behind.
- The only way to punish now is through better duo lane farming as an entire team, which is simply not possible to do in average, non-premade games.
- The game is effecitvely being reduced into a deathball/teamfight simulator.
- Since the only two objectives on the map, the Urn and Midboss, are heavily decided by who groups for them, it further causes this deathball meta to exist.
- This combines together to nullify all traditional counterplay found in other MOBAs that stops deathballing from being the dominant strategy.
- The worst part, is not only are early to mid game leads decided by deathballing, but if at any point you don't continue deathballing into the late game you will just lose your Soul lead due to the Soul Scaling on Kills.
- In summary, this makes the game incredibly boring and 1 dimensional since the only way to play is to be grouping and teamfighting.
- Even when you group and teamfight, because of Soul Scaling on Kill Souls, you will often inevitably end up close in Souls towards the late game, where you again, will be grouping and teamfighting, and the game will then be decided by who grouped first or teamfought better, regardless of Soul leads generated throughout the game due to long death timers.
- Troopers no longer increase their bounty by 20% at 8 minutes
- Neutral Creeps now give 5% less souls
So what do I suggest they do to fix these problems?
- Duo farming has to be split and inefficient outside of laning.
- So, how do they promote more teamfighting if not through the duo farming mechanic? They need to add better early to mid game objectives that reward people to group over them.
- Currently, Guardians and Walkers give a pitiful amount of Souls.
- Midboss gives a pitiful amount of Souls for taking.
- Bridge buffs can be taken so fast that you can't actually teamfight over them.
- Only the Urn can be teamfought over, but because it's not on the center of the map, it means it's too inefficient for everyone to group over it.
- So, how do they promote more teamfighting if not through the duo farming mechanic? They need to add better early to mid game objectives that reward people to group over them.
- Soul Scaling needs to be removed and replaced with Static Soul values or significantly nerfed.
- The reason why the early to mid game feels so pointless is due to Soul Scaling on everything that generates Souls. This causes early leads to be pointless as so much gold gets injected into the game as time passes that no amount of early leads can compensate for this. Static Soul values would mean leads are meaningful.
- You can still have comeback mechanics in the game to make the losing team be able to come back without having Soul Scaling - the two most popular MOBAs already do this.
- For example, you can increase the comeback mechanics related to bounties on Kills, you can add bounties to Guardians and Walkers when behind, running the Urn as the team that's behind can be further buffed, or simply stealing the Midboss crystal can give a large amount of souls to the team that's behind.
- There are many ways of balancing around jungle camps to make afk farming them less valuable. Here are some examples:
- Add a system where you need to farm X amount of minions to get full value from jungle monsters. Keep it simple like 1 wave = 1 jungle camp. Farm 4 minions, you get bonus Souls farming the next camp. Let you stack 2 of these so you can farm 2 waves and then farm 2 camps. This forces players to show in lane between camps.
- Simply lower jungle camp Soul value relative to Troopers so that farming Troopers gives significantly more. This incentivizes players to be in lane more.
- Adjust jungle camp Soul values to be dependent on location. Ones near the neutral/center line/enemy side of the map are worth more. Ones closer to your side are worth less. This incentivizes aggression and fighting over camps rather than just turtling and farming your side of the jungle.
- Lower the amount of jungle camps in the game so there's less to farm - causing players to have to group and go to lane more.
- Long story short, there are many other ways of balancing the jungle to stop so much farming with no interaction. You don't need insane Kill Soul Scaling and Duo Farming to solve this issue.
- Make Guardians and Walkers more valuable
- This punishes those who are afk farming while still giving counterplay by going for a counter attack and taking an enemy guardian/walker if the enemy over-groups to take one of your own. This creates a more dynamic and satisfying gameplay loop.
- There needs to be something in the mid boss area prior to Mid Boss spawning that is worth something substantial. By being in the center of the map it's easier to group for than Urn running.
- Replace the Urn with static neutral objectives that take time. This way you can actually fight over an early to mid game objective without someone just dropping an Urn wasting everyone's time.
It goes without saying that what is considered a satisfying gameplay loop is subjective. My belief is that when it comes to team based competitive games two elements of game design are essential:
- Individuals feel that their choices can have equal or more impact to group play based on their individual skill.
- Without this, you won't have a sufficient reward loop, as what's the point of playing another game if it feels it's being decided by factors outside of your control.
- There's sufficient variety in macro/strategy to make the player feel there's novelty in each game.
- Without enough novelty, the gameplay will feel stale and boring, as patterns become predictable, and you lose interest.
