Rick Lane
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It’s been almost a month since Deadlock‘s last notable update, with Valve recently reducing the frequency of changes to its third-person MOBA to ‘improve’ its design process. That adjustment has resulted in a much more substantial update this month, however, with Valve completely overhauling Deadlock’s map.
In a Steam post, Valve described these extensive layout changes in typically terse fashion. “The map has been redesigned around being 3 lanes rather than 4. This has a large number of accompanying map-wide changes regarding visuals, building layouts, pathways, neutral camps, air vents, breakables, powerup buffs, juke spots, mid boss, etc.” To accompany these alterations, Valve has also added an ‘Explore map’ feature, where players can “run around an empty city to test movement and navigation.”
Like I said, it’s a substantial rework, but what do these changes mean? Well, it seems Valve didn’t just reduce the number of lanes, but eliminated solo lanes from the map entirely, pushing players to work together in duos. Valve doesn’t explain why it’s done this, but it’s possible the change is to ensure new players don’t get bundled into a solo lane they’re not equipped to handle. Valve recently tweaked matchmaking to make the game fairer on new players, so such an alteration would fall in line with that emphasis on designing a fun experience for everyone.
As Valve mentions, this is far from the only change made to the map. The update adds several skybridges that stretch between several of the map’s tower blocks, with powerups emplaced on those bridges, a fairly obvious incentive for players to get vertical. It also relocates the midboss, adds new jungle camps, and gives the whole environment a big splash of colour.
Although the map is Valve’s primary target here, the update also tweaks pretty much every area of the game. DLSS support has been added “as an FSR2 alternative for temporal anti aliasing and upscaling”. Soul orbs have been reworked so that they now visibly fly toward players when collected, but also hang around for a shorter duration. Damage reporting had been made much more detailed, with the system visualising “the amount of damage reduced by resistances or shields” while also showing “the number of instances of damage done by each ability”. I’m also weirdly fond of the simple declaration “ziplines are now curved”. I don’t know why this pleases me so much, but it does.
Meanwhile, pretty much every playable character has been modified, refined or improved, whether that’s new animations for the likes of Abrams, Mirage, and Sinclair, voiceover remasters for Lady Geist, Dynamo, and Infernus, or adjustment to how abilities work (which most characters have received in some form or another). Sadly, Valve has yet to make the most sorely needed character change, refusing to revert Fathom’s name to the far more enjoyable Slork (slork).
You can read the full changelog here. Valve’s experiment of developing a game directly alongside the community seems to be progressing smoothly, though this is now somewhat contingent on how players react to these extensive map changes. If you’ve yet to try Deadlock yourself and fancy getting involved, you can find out details about that here, but the short version is, you need to be invited by someone who already has access.