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The latest Deadlock update makes plenty of changes, but one in particular has proven pretty controversial. If you’ve been playing Valve’s new blend of MOBA and hero shooter, you’ll probably have a pretty intimate familiarity with its map already. Much like its inspirations in Counter-Strike and Dota 2, learning the layout and intricacies of the Deadlock map is crucial to success. Yet its new-look minimap isn’t winning any fans, and while I’ve yet to play a full game on the new patch I can already see why.
There’s a lot happening at any one time in Deadlock – with four lanes, six characters on each side of the field, and all manner of tiny features from regular fixtures like shops, ropes, and jump pads to more dynamic aspects such as the Spirit Urn, there’s a lot to stay aware of. As such, keeping one eye on the minimap at all times is a big part of maintaining your situational awareness in Valve’s new evolution of MOBAs, and doing so will immediately benefit your overall performance.
The latest Deadlock patch notes for Thursday September 12 rolled out a heavy list of changes. More sweeping balance changes have been made across the various heroes and items, the orange lane is now green, pressing the spacebar no longer cancels your abilities (that’s now done by pressing the ability button again), and matchmaking is now open full-time. Among the adjustments, however, is a redesigned minimap – you can see a comparison of the old (left) and new (right) layouts in the image below.
While the new-look map is certainly a little cleaner to look at, players were quick to notice that it offers much less detail than before. It’s lower-contrast, making it a little harder to read the layout to start with, and doesn’t show any of the additional pathways through or between buildings. A post titled ‘New patch minimap – please revert’ has quickly flown to the top of the game’s Reddit page, with many chiming in to add their feelings, but the consensus seems clear (and I’m in agreement) that this feels like a downgrade.
Of course, Deadlock is still very much in the early development stages – you still can’t join the Deadlock playtest without an invite yet, even if they’re not hard to come by – and so there’s plenty of opportunity for Valve to experiment. Many of the changes made in this week’s update are ones I’ve personally been hoping for; I simply cannot train my brain to not want to press the jump key to float up during Vindicta’s flight ability, for example, which previously canceled the skill and dumped you firmly back on solid ground.
As such, there’s a good chance the Deadlock team is already taking this feedback under consideration and that we’ll see further changes made in the future. If you’ve also been playing, you can sign up to the official forum from the game’s main menu to deliver your own feedback or read through patch notes in full.
If you still can’t decide who the best characters are, check our Deadlock tier list for the latest lineup. We’ve also got the latest news and details on when the Deadlock release date might arrive to keep you informed.
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