วีดีโอ

Another dead game for Valve.

Comparing Player Retention is silly. Deadlock has no Player Retention mechanics or meta-incentives at all. Rivals is currently spending millions to get people to stay in-game or watch streamers for drops. In fact, Deadlock currently disincentivizes people from grinding for rank or "playing normally" since they want people to test new heroes instead. It is an Early Dev Build, even calling it a GAME is a stretch. This thing is 2 years from release. The client is buggy and instable and anybody addicted to "content" will not find it here. The game is still in LIMITED TESTING as well, with not a SINGLE official interview, tweet or website attached to Deadlock. It only has a Steampage with a WARNING NOTICE that this game is far from ready to be played by a larger audience without any way to download the game (good luck searching for a stranger who invites you for free). HOWEVER, it is the second most wish-listed game on Steam, so there are hundreds of thousands looking forward to a wider release.

Never cook again

TRASH GAME Cannot wait to get everyone I know to downvote the shit out of this game, as if it's not the general consensus

As long aa they don't go the way of overwatch

Not fair to compair to a Marvel game where most people will play because of the Marvel branding

The matchmaking is what made me quit. Towards the end I had games with people that said it was their 5th or 6th game ever on my team, while I have 250+ hours in the game. I get that it's difficult to match up even teams of 6v6 with so few players, but it has just been torturously bad the last month or so.

I get a lot of your points but man am I disagreeing about adding more heroes. We have what? Like 20ish heros ATM? Now lets assume you need about 50-75 matches per hero to "get a proper feel for it" and become "good" with the hero. Thats now about 1000-1500 matches. Adding too many heroes will scare away players. Rarely in the history of "adding "more" to a game" i felt like it was a good choice. I have several friends that even say they cant be bothered to get into deadlock right now as there are too many heroes and too many items. While im a nolife gamer myself I feel like people underestimate the time it takes a casual ish (lets say 1 match a day) gamer to get trough the basics. Assuming you just wanna play every hero once or twice to get a feeling for it and learn how to potentially counter it, thats now roughly a 4-6 weeks time investment to a casual player. I personally lever tried LoL (even tho interested) due to the sheer amount of heros I'd have to learn to even start properly

This games to hardcore for the average person including myself. Adding a different mode isn't gonna fix the problem either. People don't wanna hear they should go play the weenie hut jr mode. People are craving a game like deadlock. But they don't want all the extra hard things that come with a moba. Once someone figures out that recipe it will be a huge success. Imagine a game like marvel rivals or overwatch with moba mechanics but keeping it easier for casual audiences. That game will BLOW UP.

It's certainly not casual friendly, but frankly neither was LoL, however they've made huge strides in the last 10+ years to shore that up, gamer sentiment has also changed a lot. My biggest personal gripe is how much matches can drag on, I hope they make some changes so they wrap up faster.

I’ve created 3 alt accounts just to be able to play whoever and have fun. Every time I get back to my rank, I just get bored and hop off. There’s not much to do and the lower player base really makes the game harder to want to play.

It also need a more impactful of story and lore presentation i love dota2 but compare to league the story presentation of league is much better while dota2 is just mehh...

If you don't think a game can fail before it is released you are delusional and naive.

It died because the devs only listen to pros

For competitive scene I think the death time shortened is a good thing. Gives the other team a chance to come back from a major loss

the game is dead, and it never stood a chance. the game tries to appeal to two different player bases. the moba folks and the dm/mechanical focused players. you choose one, not both when developing a game.

tf2 won deadlock lost

are you living under a rock the game has 500 players. everyone's playing marvel rivald

Well, the game still needs to be finished, it needs to add: - Good ranked system - good matchmaking system - cosmetics - progression for heroes - finish lore & story - an actually good anti cheat - textures for heroes and map (whole game) - redesigned heroes (i heard every hero is getting a redesign and a lot of them are still designs from Neon Prime) - more heroes (22 right now --> 40?) - jungle camp variety - finished map, more interesting objectives around map - community support/workshop/servers (if they add this the game will be immortal) - finish mid boss design (attack, redesign, textures) - add more items - good tutorial - more gamemodes (it doesn't even have to be a MOBA mode like ARAM or even PVP, it could be something like wave defense against monsters along with the economy system of gaining money and then buying items to get stronger as well which i think will really appeal to the casual players) - trailer + cinematics - advertisement - a good ui

Pretty stupid to be concerned. We aren't players. We're voluntary pre-alpha testers.

One thing that I think is desperately missing is a surrender. But I do think it is very intentionally missing to gather statistics on how games develop. I think closing out the game takes way too much time currently. Respawn times should max out at 40 seconds. You reach 70 seconds currently in the most casual games, which is awful. Worrying about retention is fair, but you have to see that Marvel Rival just draws a lot of this player base too currently. I agree though that this game is very sweaty by default, but so is LoL, and that game is huge still. Worrying about the number of champions is a little unwarranted though. Clearly they know and they have already a couple new ones in the queue. Personally I think when they release the game they should not have more than the current roster and then release new characters on a monthly cycle.

it needs to double down on its noir aesthetics. It needs some atmosphere and cosmetics.

I've got 500 hours in deadlock.. game is boring now... lol really?...

So sick of videos like this. "I'm concerned" "Game is dead" "Game is dying" "Game is bad" Grow up. 🙄

Rage bait video

Early access 😊😊😊

Yeah this games needs a casual/ shorter gamemode cuz playing always 40 mins is frustrating and annoying if u lose in the beginning or get snowballed, More game modes, maps, heroes and full release i see this game shining honestly (xmas skin impletmentation was fun only valve to do it this way)

DeadLock Biggest Strength is also is its biggest weakness , it is a Hero shooter game within a MOBA . And MOBA is sooooo boring and too complex for the casual.

"Game is missing a bunch of features!" says another youtuber talking about an unfinished, unreleased game

Ive lost 27 games out of 32. The match making was great until early November and it just became brutal. Prior to the peeceived changes i was at a straight 50% W/L rate.

This is such a dumbass take. Other games have no news after the limited alpha test of over a year. There's no need for player retention when the game is pretty much barebones. Rivals is a full game, Deadlock is not even beta. Wtf is this mindset? You're just milking the f game for content.

The number of Deadlock videos is falling off very quickly, basically in line with the absolutely crashing player numbers.

Heroes of the Storm in Alpha had a lot more viewers on Twitch back in the days, and even though it had more concurrent players and viewers, it died. I think Valve has to keep giving players more reason to keep the player base engaged. The game is also too hardcore and repetitive to appeal to masses.

I don’t think people realize that Valve is one of the best companies at learning from their mistakes. Knowing Valve, this game is probably 2 years away from launch. The company has some of the best psychologist and economist working on their games. Every competitive valve title is still very healthy to this day. Unfortunately, they are known for taking their sweet time with their work. This game got a lot of attention for it being so bare bones, and when it gets fully released, people are going to come back because they remembered how fun the game was. The game needs to focus on improving the core gameplay before focusing on player retention

...buddy, pall, fella, sir, man, bro... the game isn't even out yet proper! And if you think it is, no live service game has characters changing their entire identity. Yamato is gonna get completely reworked and also, the game has a load of place holder assets. This is a valve game, be happy that you can actually play test it because this game is gonna basically re release in about 3-4 years once the game is fully ready to release. There will be cosmetics, there will be stuff for player retention, there will be the things that you can expect from a valve title, its just gonna take some time. They are not trying to be the next hero shooter or the next huge live service game, they are just trying to make a game they love and that they hope people will love. That is valve, they put all the time the game will need to become the perfect game they invision. The reason (i think) they released it early is to get feedback on balance and what to make the gameplay to make it more fun. They could have not done this and they would have acually saved money (since they need to run servers and that costs money) if they just kept working but they just want player feedback and just want to make this as fun for us. They first make a fun game and only then they think about how to monitize it. If you need examples, look at other valve games.

its still in in dev stage its not even in alpha

Marval rivals hasn't even been out for a month? Deadlock was also able to hold over 100k players for more a month. If we are comparing both games at 1 month in, they are identical. Braindead points before the 1-minute mark. 🤔

You also have to realize that in the current state if they released with all the current beta charcters and alapped on a battlepass or some kind of monetization that it would be a lame game. Being part of the playtest voicing your opinion is more important so that changes can be made

Allowing players to play for such a long period like this was a huge mistake by the developers. This game will never do well, even after the official release, because people have already tried it, and the hype has been completely lost. btw this game is too hard to learn as well. the reason people still playing it is because it's Value's game, person who really love the game, or just hardcore competitive who think they can take advantage of other new players once it's official release. but obviously, this game is going to fail.

There is no advertising. It is still invite only. They arn't paying streamers to play it. Everyone I talk to still hasn't even heard of the game. Comparing this to marvel rivals is ridiculous seeing as they had a public release with advertising and streamers playing it for Ads. The game is fine and will only get bigger.

Your ideas are good, it's just the framing of them in this video that is way off the mark. I know (ex)players like yourself absolutely hate it when people remind you that this is a game in alpha playtesting because it feels like a dismissal of your complaints, but it is also literally reality. You have to live in reality, not this fantasy land dreamworld where it makes sense to unfavourably compare a playtest to a fully released game. Because in reality, that does not make sense. By all means quit the game and wait for further progress to be made before returning (I've been playing less too), but pretending the game is in a crisis or getting concerned about its future is just so wildly off base that it's actually embarassing to see how much traction it has got online. Modern gamers seem to live in this constant state of overreaction to literally everything and have no grounding in reality.

marvel rivals is a SUPER mainstream game as a Disney franchise with tons of free advertising from their other media. Deadlock has not had any real advertising and it's a huge anomaly that we even get to play it in this early of a development stage. I'm gonna be honest, any criticism of this game atm doesn't make much sense to me. A lot of the core systems of the game are still WIP, and you rarely ever play games that are still in that state. The fact that the game is this attention-grabbing and fun already is an amazing sign and we have absolutely no reason to worry rn.

Whatever direction Valve is gonna take Deadlock is up for them to decide, for now I am looking forward to your Marvel Rivals content!

Its a closed alpha man, let em cook. Id rather have a well polished game rather than player retention in the end. Look at Activision and them trying so hard to "retain players" just let em make a good game and the player base will be there.

trash take

Dont worry once I get back to my set up ill start playing

deadlock's time will come.. jesus. please be patient. this is valve we're talking about. they will do everything they can to bring this game to light once it gets closer to release

Just an anecdote, most gamer friends I talk to don’t even know what deadlock is. We’re in a bubble of deadlock gamers but the general public still has no idea what it is.

You start by discounting the “it’s an alpha” reason. But your entire argument boils down to the game being unfinished… of course it’s unfinished. It’s in a closed alpha.

This is valve were taking about they could keep deadlock alive from tournaments alone lol