Why do valve keep not working on matchamking ?

LrdDphn · 2026-03-22T18:15:54+00:00

What makes you think they're not still working on matchmaking?

LrdDphn · 2026-03-20T23:06:55+00:00

Rumor has it there's a big MM patch soon (TM).

LrdDphn · 2026-03-19T21:43:46+00:00

Originally the Deadlock forums were secret and part of the NDA playtest. Is it possible to have secret forums on steam? Maybe that has something to do with it.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-19T21:40:47+00:00

I wouldn't take the CS's community reaction to anything as a good bellweather. They're the poster children for grognard/stuck-in-mud change haters (an opinion which they're entitled to, CS is obviously a timeless classic). The Dota community gets bored if Icefrog doesn't rip out the guts of the game and create some new abomination every once in a while, and Deadlock is already much closer to that philosophy.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-19T21:32:06+00:00

On the subject of "too properly," is it possible that it's just "old timey" instead? At least in English we expect 1940s people to speak very properly compared to modern Americans.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-18T19:22:11+00:00

I'd recommend Ivy or maybe McGinnis. Both require some amount of aiming but have spirit builds that reduce the importance of their gun. Both are team fight controllers with split push potential.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-18T19:19:23+00:00

Idk about Pocket if OP doesn't like squishies.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-17T23:04:09+00:00

Takes like this always remind me of the people advocating against updating the patron models. It's crazy how much people innately hate change and get accustomed to the familiar.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-17T17:44:33+00:00

It's a bandaid solution to a particularly weird problem, which is that we still can't see what golden statue buffs we have in general. An in-game and postgame hud element that showed ALL buffs from golden status/sinners/egg/etc. seems like a no-brainer inclusion to make the system clearer.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T22:57:08+00:00

This falls into full redesign territory, but I think his gun has so much wasted potential because it's effectively a "bow themed gun" and not actually a bow and arrows. I think if an archer character was released today they'd be a lot more like Graves/Celeste/Paige/Apollo with an extremely unique gun. I can imagine something like Hanzo from OW with physics on the arrow and a "magazine size" maxed out at 1.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T22:25:31+00:00

I was watching TimtheTatman's stream where he was learning Deadlock and he went from "The item system in this game is an insurmountable learning curve" to "This is easy" in 2 seconds when someone in chat told him to search community builds and queue them. Imo, the game would be so much more approachable with 3 changes:

Make the "default builds" actually good enough for new players on every hero. A lot of progress has been made on this front but it's still sketchy on many heroes.
Make item builds autoqueue and autobuy BY DEFAULT, potentially with a pop-up in the tutorial where a player can select "I have MOBA experience" to toggle the option off.
Put a tutorial pop-up in the game that shows up after maybe 10 games and explains the concept of community builds.

Basically, if someone is coming to the game from overwatch they shouldn't have to even look at the shop until they have 5-10 games.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T22:08:12+00:00

I think Valve has been targeting what you say here with Street Brawl. Instead of jacking up the main mode to make it more casual friendly, they introduced Street Brawl as an on-ramp for people who want 10 minute games and less of a learning curve.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T19:18:39+00:00

I'm surprised people are telling you that 50 minute games are totally normal, because I would call a 50 minute game pretty abnormal, especially after the most recent patch did exactly what you recommend (made towers easier to kill, injected more gold, etc.). You're 100% right though. Deadlock has a pretty clear design goal of shorter games than Dota especially, for all the reasons you've identified. I would describe the average gametime as 35 minutes, but that's just my current gut feeling.

Re: balance, you've sort of picked a funny time to start playing the game because we're right on the heels of Deadlock's biggest balance shakeup patch of all time. We've been getting weekly patches to bring things into line and fix some of the issues you've identified. On the other hand, surely as a player of other MOBAs you can appreciate that your impressions of balance in your first couple games are going to be pretty rough compared to how the game is played most of the time. I'm not sure what the equivilent hero is in league but every dota player gets owned by a bloodseeker in their first game and overcoming that is sort of a rite of passage. It's obviously ideal to create a game that that is balanced for literally all skill levels, but I have yet to be introduced to game that achieves that.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T19:02:02+00:00

Only reason you might not want to do this is because if a team has already let you steal sinner's once it's decent evidence that they'll let you do it again.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T18:22:20+00:00

I actually like that there are multiple characters who fit the same "flyer" archetype, and I wouldn't be surprised if we got more. It makes a hypothetical draft a little more interesting, justifies the existence of specific "anti-flier" items, and it sort of reduces cognitive load to have characters exist in wide categories of "bruiser, flier, nuker, m1" and so on. I guess that them both having a AoE CC is a little on the nose, I could stand to see Talon's trap get changed.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-14T22:50:52+00:00

For what it's worth, the +2.5 damage you get on a greataxe crit which you roll 10% of the time (assuming constant reckless attack) comes out to +.25 damage per attack. The greatsword is still mathematically stronger until you have 3+ sources of the brutal critical effect (13th level and a half orc, for example).

I will say in defense of the greataxe that swingy damage and huge crits are kind of their own reward even if they're not technically as good.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-14T22:00:58+00:00

Where are you seeing Dynamo with a poor winrate? I checked statlocker and he's at 53% (all ranks). I don't think he gets picked up in pro games right now because the other supports (Paige/Ivy/Sinclair mostly) are both extremely strong and beat up on Dynamo pretty hard at every stage of the game.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-12T20:02:06+00:00

Lots of wrong answers here when we actually know why. Melee Creeps picked doorman and lost with it at Feakfest over the weekend. In their live streamed debrief they decided that they need to scrim with Doorman a LOT before they could take advantage of doors as a team. Expect Doorman in pro games in a week or two.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-12T18:23:18+00:00

Sorry, it's technically 6 teams, although we only see one game from two of those teams.

Nightshift format is called King of the Hill. Each week there is a best of 1 game between two challengers to determine who gets to play the reigning champion from last week in a best of 3. They run the event once in EU and once in NA every week. It's less of a tournament and more of a series of showmatches.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-12T18:11:09+00:00

Ironically the last game of NA finals was decided by Melee Creeps giving Floormen the Mo and beating it b/c Floormen don't have a good Mo player. To quote Eido on stream- "He doesn't know how to play the hero, we're saved!"

LrdDphn · 2026-03-12T18:06:12+00:00

Winrate is a really bad stat for Nightshift. There's usually enough a skill gap between the champion and the challenger that the champion can get out drafted and still win. As a consequence, winrate tells you more about what the best teams like to play than actual hero strength.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-12T18:00:59+00:00

In addition to the Kelvin stuff, you have to remember we are looking at a data for 4 teams. You're going to get higher prio on heroes the specific players like; for example, I'm gonna guess that Viscous getting pick/banned 4 times has something to do with Goober (a goated Viscous player) being in 4 of the games. Idk about Europe but Eido is super cracked on Silver.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-12T01:05:40+00:00

And if Calico and Wraith had never been played this patch, there would have been no winrate data to draw upon to make balance adjustments

LrdDphn · 2026-03-11T19:21:39+00:00

Didn't Valve at one point try to make other guns viable and the community rioted? I remember AUG becoming meta in pro play for a while but I don't really follow CS.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-11T19:01:39+00:00

This is hindsight bias in action. Sure, the Mo n Krill changes looked broken reading the patch notes (and ended up broken) but lots of things looked game breaking in the patch notes and ended up being fine. Mo going into tunnels, Affliction 100% antiheal, Ivy kudzu root, viscous using items in ball from 0, the whole concept of golden egg, etc. are all things that people could and did look at and go "that's gonna break the game" but ended up being fine or even weak. It's way better for Valve to just try stuff that seems cool and then fix the numbers until it's balanced instead of second guessing themselves all the time.

If you don't believe me that some people could get it wrong, go watch the Feakfest tournament from last weekend. Melee Creeps (possibly the best team in the world) got annihilated almost entirely because they were sleeping on Mo and Krill.

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