Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia.
. But, as someone who sank about 2,000 hours into Dota 2 , I can confidently say that its shooter mechanics are still a huge part of what makes it so fascinating: And that's because its lanes, which are very MOBA-like in nature, are utterly transformed by the fact you can run and gun in them.
The geography of the lanes, though? That's where the meat of Deadlock is. The more I look at them, the more I feel like I'm observing some kind of forbidden Lovecraftian shape unfolding eldritch game design secrets to me—MOBA brilliance woven in with Valve's years of hard-earned shooter knowledge in games like TF2 and Counter-Strike.
What MOBA greenhorns might not realise in their first games of Deadlock is that, while killing your enemy is the best-case scenario, dinging them enough to send them back to base is also fantastic. This is because it forces them to miss one, maybe two waves of last-hits while you stay a happy farmer.
Another concept Valve uses in Deadlock is the idea of creep equilibrium. Again, while the metagame in Dota 2 may have shifted since, back when I played it you generally wanted to keep the creepwave close your tower—a Guardian, in Deadlock terms. This gives you maximum access to your last-hits, while also giving you a measure of protection against ganks. Here's a terrible image I drafted in MS paint to show you what I mean.
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