Valve's MOBA Shooter Deadlock Cuts a Lane, Spurring Reactions From Its Playerbase

ign.com:

Deadlock, the MOBA-meets-hero shooter mash-up from Valve, has been in a perpetual state of quiet build-up over the last year. But that hasn't stopped Valve from making massive, tectonic changes, like cutting down the number of lanes.

Yesterday, February 25, Valve published the Map Rework Update for Deadlock. Chief among the changes was a redesign of Deadlock's core map around three lanes, rather than four. For those who don't dabble in MOBAs, these "lanes" are the central focus of gameplay; minions spawn at each team's base and surge down them, attempting to push the battle lines into each other's territory. Players take up residence in the lanes, fighting over the killing blow on minions to accrue money and experience they can use to power up.

It's one big game of tug-of-war, and reducing the number of figurative ropes from four to three has pretty drastic implications. It cuts down on one source of resources and reduces the number of fronts in the ongoing battle. It also means, for the 6-on-6 battles of Deadlock, that previously "solo" lanes will more often be duo lanes.

"Definitely going to be missing four lanes," one commenter said on the Deadlock subreddit. "I always thought that was one of the more unique aspects of Deadlock. Oh well, learn and adapt I guess."

Despite some of the worried hyperbole over map shifts, there is a degree of trust — though not absolute or unflinching — and voicing measured feedback. "It’s just a test guys chill," said one commenter. "If it works well it stays, if it doesn’t work then it will go away like mid urn." (A former game mechanic.)

A decent amount of this trust stems from the fact that IceFrog, the pseudonymous developer behind Dota 2, is also working on Deadlock. Dota 2 is fairly infamous for massive overhauls and game-changing updates, wiith patch notes that felt like getting whiplash from spreadsheets. Old memes stretching back to the early days of Dota 2, encouraging players to trust in IceFrog's changes, have already been