non-gun primary fire, and design philosophy for more distinct heroes

[Kazink]

I hope that this post doesn't end up being too vague and lengthy, but with the new focus on expanding the roster it's something I'd really like to talk about. Also I come from overwatch, so sorry in advance for using examples from it repeatedly.

The current heroes definitely feel distinct, but I think that they could be more so. I think too often we take for granted that when playing a shooter you will have a gun, and that it will act a certain way. Yes many of them still feel pretty different from one another (like Abrams vs bebop, for example), it feels fundamentally like the same activity - trying to aim at them. For the most part, the difference between guns is
- what situations your aim will be more impactful in (falloff, scatter, etc)
- tracking vs clicking/flicking

This probably sounds pretty obvious for a shooter game, but to me aiming is one of the least interesting skills in a shooter, and its too often taken for granted that strict "gunplay" should be the focus of these games because shooters have been in a creative drought for years. The shooter skills I want to see more of are
- displacement juggling (quake lightning gun and rocket launcher, winston overwatch primal)
- movement effects (rocket launcher from tf2, quake, and others)
- hitbox manipulation (corner swings with rein's hammer in overwatch)
- animation timing (quake rail gun, junker queen axe in overwatch, anything with cast time pretty much. Bebop's gun does this but you aren't timing a short window in the same way.)
- animation cancels and comboing
- projectile aiming

(not including fundamentals like engagement timing, positioning, and movement in this list of skills because they are already very present in deadlock and I'm focusing on potential mechanics for primary fire)

I would love to see these mechanics explored more. Melee weapons and other short range cleave primaries (winston and rein from overwatch) are my favorite, because of how much they focus the character's kit on positioning, engagement timing, and controlling space by demanding resources/attention from multiple enemies. I get to have something like this playstyle on Abrams (shoutout to Imaya's "danger zone" build) and kind of a couple others, but so much of the roster just feels so similar to me in this respect.
The biggest issue that I see for exploring this is that some kind of ranged poke is pretty much mandatory for heroes to be able to do tower damage. A low cooldown ability might be enough to cover this base, or maybe some heroes should just be better off duoing and that's okay.

I guess my point is just that this is worth exploring. I think that pushing the limits and assumptions of what a shooter plays like is how you end up with incredibly new and distinct hero identities, and there has been not nearly enough exploration on this front from other games (even overwatch, which I like for exactly this reason, hasn't really revisited concepts like rein and winston since the game's release).

 

[klvsdida]

This was one of the first things I also picked up on when playing the game and you did a much better job at explaining it. But I think it boils down to what the main focus of the game is. If their intention is for the game to be closer to a MOBA having the primary attacks be somewhat more underwhelming at the cost of making the abilities feel better its not the worst decision. But if the game does truly want to go more towards the shooter aspect what you said fits much better.

 

[Sarus]

if you would like to see those concepts, you should create them in a kit.

 

[Chilla9001]

I think that right now, the closest we have to different primary-fires in-game are bebop and Mcginnis, who's primary fire only differ slightly from the rest of the cast, I do agree that aiming is boring as hell, but for now at least it seems like the devs are intentionally keeping the different primary fires very similar to each other, maybe because its still in alpha and they want players to be able to play multiple characters without feeling like they have to re-learn everything every time they switch from a character to another. I think thats very much a mindset taken straight from dota, in the sense that for newer players, the game is so daunting with all the different elements you need to keep track of/know of (such as what skills do etc...) that you need to have some sort of constant throughout every character, that being in this case their basic attack, you put your cursor over an enemy and press M2, in deadlock you put your cursor over an enemy and press M1, simple, straight to the point and a constant throughout every character.

 

[impeaceful]

I agree, especially with adding more projectile aim, and/or guns with unique secondary fire mechanics.

 

[mrsam1804]

These are really cool ideas. I was thinking about something like this too and trying to come up with a concept for like a full melee or a granade launcher or a rail gun heroes. my head is going to explode tbh.

 

[friedtaco]

I've been playing a lot of tf2 recently and I was just thinking about how I wish there was a character that could rocket jump like that in this game

 

[Kazink]

if you would like to see those concepts, you should create them in a kit.

good point, I gave it a whirl here