Let’s Be Honest About Deadlock

Dead­lock is a game that is so ear­ly in de­vel­op­ment that it’s easy to crit­i­cize a lot, un­fair­ly; there’s a lot that (as­sum­ing de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues) will doubt­less be ad­dressed at some point. Places where they just need to add more sys­tems, voice­lines, me­chan­ics, pol­ish.

I don’t want to talk about that. Most­ly.

As a per­son who has been think­ing for years about a game de­sign al­most ex­act­ly like Dead­lock’s (to be fair, I am an am­a­teur who will prob­a­bly nev­er suc­ceed, so don’t take “years of think­ing” too se­ri­ous­ly), I am not too big to ad­mit to jeal­ousy, and also elit­ism. I know what I want out of a game like Dead­lock, just like I know what I want out of a game like Over­watch, or Civ­i­liza­tion. I want them all to be the “bet­ter” ver­sions in my imag­i­na­tion, ver­sions that might not ex­ist even if they put me in charge with an in­fi­nite bud­get, but which def­i­nite­ly will nev­er ex­ist so long as no­body knows the var­i­ous weird de­signs that my brain comes up with.

To whit: I don’t like Dead­lock be­cause the de­sign as it is to­day seems like a com­plete dead-end.

When I say “dead-end”, I mean that ide­al­ly, the theme and aes­thet­ics in­spires the me­chan­ics and the me­chan­ics in­spires the aes­thet­ics. Com­pare Over­watch with Team Fortress 2: TF2 had some very in­ter­est­ing and sil­ly char­ac­ters, but there was a lack of ground­ed­ness that makes it feel… dif­fi­cult to imag­ine adding new char­ac­ters. Every char­ac­ter was an ar­che­type, some­thing larg­er than life that rep­re­sent­ed an en­tire tac­ti­cal cat­e­go­ry: the sniper, the tank, the heal­er, the spy. Per­haps there are one or two ar­che­types that could still be added to the de­sign to flesh it out, but the only way you’d get to a larg­er ros­ter of char­ac­ters would be to re­move the fun­da­men­tal de­sign con­straint that each char­ac­ter is an ar­che­type. And… it’s dif­fi­cult to write too many nar­ra­tives, even cheap skits, us­ing only the same few char­ac­ters in a sta­t­ic world.

Over­watch, in con­trast, from the be­gin­ning em­braced the idea of nu­anced dif­fer­ences be­tween sim­i­lar char­ac­ters, and chose to frame those me­chan­i­cal dif­fer­ences based on char­ac­ter back­grounds, us­ing the en­tire mod­ern world as in­spi­ra­tion. While you could imag­ine a ver­sion of Over­watch where all the me­chan­ics are the same but the char­ac­ters are all (let’s say for ex­am­ple) white peo­ple from Amer­i­ca, that de­sign would feel much more like a stretch than Over­watch does, be­cause the ques­tion, “Why have I nev­er seen any­thing re­mote­ly like this be­fore?” is eas­i­er to an­swer when the new char­ac­ter and their new me­chan­ics come from a part of the world that so far hasn’t been rep­re­sent­ed at all. You haven’t seen it yet… be­cause the world is large.

Now, to Dead­lock.

I “get” the… ef­fec­tive nar­ra­tive premise of Dead­lock, as it is now. I don’t like it, but I get it. I have read a fair few things about oc­cultism in the mod­ern world, and seen more than enough fic­tion about evil soul-har­vest­ing bad guys who will re­ward loy­al­ty for those will­ing to sub­mit. It’s not sub­tle, though it’s also ob­vi­ous that right now, they’re not re­al­ly say­ing any­thing. They just need­ed a premise that works with the me­chan­ics that they have, and… hon­est­ly, they’re do­ing okay with that. The premise sup­ports the over­all goal, the har­vest­ing of re­sources to make the char­ac­ters stronger.

But it doesn’t re­al­ly sup­port more than that. The de­sign as they have it right now is a to­tal dead-end. Sure, you can come up with new “he­roes” with new me­chan­ics, and you can come up with new up­grades and pur­chasable abil­i­ties–but the me­chan­i­cal de­sign as it is right now doesn’t in­spire any of that. Maybe they have a “true” de­sign that isn’t re­al­ly be­ing show­cased as it is right now–but for ob­vi­ous rea­sons I can’t speak to that. The im­plic­it nar­ra­tive that they have here isn’t ex­act­ly fer­tile ground for cre­at­ing new abil­i­ties, new char­ac­ters, new maps. You can fill out what you al­ready have, and you can bring your own in­spi­ra­tion if you have ideas just sit­ting around, but… what part of the game as it is now in­spires you to say “Oh, you know what would be cool? This guy.“

Now, as I said be­fore: I’ve been think­ing about some­thing sim­i­lar for a long time. To some de­gree, what I wish to see is my thing and not their thing. And it would be stu­pid, self­ish, and un­fair to say some­thing like “Your de­sign sucks be­cause it’s not mine. My de­sign is awe­some be­cause it is mine.” But I’d like to talk about my de­sign with an em­pha­sis on trying to demonstrate the why.

First, a Foun­da­tion

Be­fore I get into it, I’d like to shout out a we­b­com­ic that no longer ex­ists, which to a cer­tain ex­tent, in­spired the de­sign. It wasn’t a beau­ti­ful com­ic (in fact it’s probably top-two ugliest comics that I unironically followed), and it wasn’t the best writ­ten. Like a lot of we­b­comics, it was the very de­f­i­n­i­tion of am­a­teur­ish–it had heart, but that was about it. It only up­dat­ed for a few years, and its archives last­ed on­line far longer than one would have ex­pect­ed… but it’s gone en­tire­ly now, with the orig­i­nal cre­ator off liv­ing their best life, or so I hope.

That com­ic was called Deus Ex Som­nia, and it was about kids who were hav­ing their dreams stolen from them by evil cor­po­rate types while they slept. But some of them man­aged to an­chor them­selves in the dream world and fight back, us­ing tools cre­at­ed by those evil cor­pos, and that lets them con­tin­ue to fight the good fight into the fu­ture. Be­cause the set­ting was whol­ly in the dream­world, there were as­pects of the lim­i­nal (chang­ing the world with your willpow­er), there were ex­cus­es to make ref­er­ences and geek out about dumb things, there were ex­cus­es to say some­thing about the world… and also… there were rea­sons to delve into the back­ground of char­ac­ters, what makes them strong and what makes them weak.

Broad­ly speak­ing, I be­lieve those as­pects make for a bet­ter nar­ra­tive base than “Big evil will give you pow­er if you com­plete a rit­u­al, in a fake New York City”. But also… a de­sign has to show off those as­pects. And how do you ef­fec­tive­ly show off a lim­i­nal dream space? Es­pe­cial­ly with­out bloat­ing a pro­ject un­til it dies a sad and lone­ly death?

Pro­ject As­tral

I be­lieve that if you want to cre­ate a game that rep­re­sents a lim­i­nal space, you have to be will­ing to change the map–if not lit­er­al­ly, at least the­mat­i­cal­ly. While the ide­al ver­sion of the game would have the map ac­tu­al­ly change–at min­i­mum, on a lane-by-lane ba­sis–de­pend­ing on the char­ac­ters or as­pects in­volved, I rec­og­nize that would be… am­bi­tious. But also… the same ide­al could be rep­re­sent­ed with less, es­pe­cial­ly in an ear­ly ver­sion of the de­sign.

In my ver­sion of Pro­ject As­tral, the char­ac­ters are still fight­ing over re­sources in a very sim­i­lar way to Dead­lock–but the re­sources that you get when you kill lane mobs, jun­gle mobs, and en­e­my char­ac­ters are all fla­vored. What fla­vor of re­sources you have, in ad­di­tion to the amount that you have, de­ter­mines what up­grades are avail­able to you. If you have ac­cess to “fire en­er­gy”, you can use it to add on-hit fire ef­fects to your at­tacks, or to un­lock fire-themed abil­i­ties. If you have ac­cess to “light­ning en­er­gy”, you can have on-hit light­ning ef­fects or light­ning-themed abil­i­ties.

But there are crit­i­cal game-bal­ance me­chan­ics here. If you choose for your own char­ac­ter and lane to pro­duce fire-type mobs, you can har­vest your own jun­gle mobs to get fire en­er­gy… but your en­e­my gets fire en­er­gy by killing your lane mobs. As long as the game al­lows you to choose what as­pect you be­gin man­i­fest­ing (whether that’s at the start of the game, or lat­er), sud­den­ly the game be­gins to have high-lev­el counter-play, where you may want some­thing, but it’s more im­por­tant to you that your en­e­my nev­er gets it. Or… at the very least, you make it more dif­fi­cult for an en­e­my in par­tic­u­lar to get an en­er­gy type, by hav­ing an ally man­i­fest it in their lane, some­where you can grind their jun­gle mobs but a spe­cif­ic en­e­my would have to aban­don their lane (or switch lanes) in or­der to take ad­van­tage. If it’s eas­i­er to move be­tween al­lied lanes than to move from one en­e­my lane to an­oth­er (us­ing some­thing like the zi­plines), then you can take ad­van­tage of that to in­con­ve­nience cer­tain en­e­mies.

And I am still ex­pect­ing that en­e­mies would have their own abil­i­ties–that the main play­er char­ac­ters are still char­ac­ters. I’d like to imag­ine that cus­tomiza­tion would be more in the fore­front and char­ac­ter-spe­cif­ic me­chan­ics de-em­pha­sized… but that’s open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion. My own me­chan­i­cal premise for how char­ac­ters work, in­volved a va­ri­ety of weapons–not specif­i­cal­ly guns, but in­clud­ing them, and wiz­ard staffs/wands, and swords/oth­er melee weapons, and also in­clud­ing oth­er en­chantable things like ar­mor, wings etc for fly­ing, oth­er equip­ment for (say) pass­ing through walls… and so on.

It’s worth em­pha­siz­ing that the “as­pects” that a lane can be de­vot­ed to are all in­tend­ed to be pow­er­ful, rule-break­ing or rule-de­ter­min­ing ef­fects. Fire as­pect cre­ates dam­age-over-time, and light­ning jumps from one tar­get to the next. But many of the things that are now char­ac­ter spe­cials can be as­pects: jump­ing and fly­ing abil­i­ties, charge at­tacks, stealth, heal­ing, snip­ing, homing abilities, phas­ing through walls, cre­at­ing walls (one way or ful­ly sol­id)… you could imag­ine de­sign­ing lane mobs and/or chang­ing how a lane is laid out to em­pha­size that this is the fly­ing lane, this is the snip­ing lane, this is the fire lane.

And if you want to be a fly­ing-snip­ing-fire hero… you can do that. A fly­ing-snip­ing-fire hero doesn’t have to be specif­i­cal­ly de­signed by the dev team, you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to com­mit to that style of play be­fore the round starts, and the game doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to bal­anced for that spe­cif­ic com­bi­na­tion, not as long as each piece (and per­haps each pair of pieces) is bal­anced against the oth­ers. And im­por­tant­ly, if a com­bi­na­tion is dis­cov­ered to be over­pow­ered… there are ways to im­ple­ment counter and bal­ance mech­a­nisms both in-game and in the meta-game.

But more to the point, the existence of these as­pects creates some­thing that you can play with in the de­sign process, with­out it feel­ing as con­trived (as, be­ing hon­est a lot of shit in games like this does). Maybe each aspect can only appear once. Maybe teams can vote to lock out cer­tain as­pects at the be­gin­ning so that no­body can have it, es­pe­cial­ly in ranked or cus­tom games. Maybe teams can vote to se­lect an as­pect for their shared back-field, where the en­e­my won’t be able to eas­i­ly ac­cess it un­til the late-game, but every­one on their side has ac­cess. Maybe when you de­cide that shared as­pect, it de­ter­mines the voice and char­ac­ter of the Pa­tron you’re os­ten­si­bly de­fend­ing. Maybe some As­pects are locked out ran­dom­ly on a day-by-day ba­sis, or cen­ter-field mobs that every­one can ac­cess will ran­dom­ly have some as­pect, either on a game-by-game basis, or on a spawn-by-spawn basis.

Maybe when a cer­tain amount of any giv­en As­pect is har­vest­ed, it spawns a su­per mob of that type some­where in the world–in the lane, or a pro­tect­ed jun­gle niche. Maybe that super mob has some specific advantage when you kill it. Maybe the su­per mob in the cen­ter cre­ates de­fend­ers of every as­pect in play when at­tacked–dan­ger­ous to fight, but also, a source of all re­source types. Maybe the cen­ter-field su­per mob is its own in­de­pen­dent Pa­tron with its own per­son­al­i­ty, with quests that or some­thing else to give you. Maybe the as­pect­ed mobs are only jun­gle mobs to start with, and you have to pur­chase get­ting As­pect­ed lane mobs–it helps you push, but it also gives the en­e­my more ac­cess to your type. Maybe you can keep pur­chas­ing new lane mob types with all of the dif­fer­ent as­pect­ed en­er­gies that you get from killing the en­e­my or grind­ing on your side, un­til you have all of them. Maybe you can up­grade them into su­per lane mobs when you have enough.

There are so many things to play with–and so you un­der­stand why I talked about Dead­lock as a “dead-end”. The way it’s de­signed right now… what does it in­spire? What comes next? Sure you can al­ways in­vent new char­ac­ters, and sure you can de­sign a new map if you want, but… what is there to be ex­cit­ed about? What is there to think about, es­pe­cial­ly for those of us less in­ter­est­ed in spread­sheets full of dam­age num­bers? What’s around the cor­ner?

For now…

Maybe they have an­swers to some of these things al­ready, and they’re just not ready to re­veal it now. I’m just some guy, I don’t claim to know. And even if they took in­spi­ra­tion from my ideas, I’m sure it wouldn’t hap­pen right away; it’d take work to change the game’s base code like that. But I’d like to see it. I’d like something more interesting than what we are shown today.

It can be done. But a lot of things can be done. I’m not sure I’d believe that they’re just sitting around saying “Man I wish someone would give us a workable foundation to turn this into something better.” I’m sure they have people with ideas.

I hope those ideas are good. I know it’s early yet but… right now, what they have just isn’t good enough.