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Deadlock gets first big update in months with major map rework: Full patch notes

BBG News

Four lanes become three as Valve sets about simplifying Deadlock for the masses.

Following several months of minor fixes and a decrease in beta participants, Valve has rolled out a significant update for Deadlock, which includes a new map design with extensive adjustments all around. While there are numerous alterations, the most immediate change players will notice is the streamlined map – the original four lanes have been reduced to three.

The overall layout of visual elements across the map has been updated to match the refit. Neutral camps, vents, power-ups, and other key features have been rearranged to fit the new design, but this arrangement could be adjusted if Valve developers find that the player community isn’t adapting well to it.

From four lanes to three: Deadlock aligned with similar MOBAs with massive map update

In a distinct fashion, Deadlock stood out as it was a third-person Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) viewed from behind the shoulders of players. However, what truly set it apart was the introduction of its fourth lane, which increased the strategic depth of the game. Typically, players engaged in one-on-one battles along individual lanes, while the fifth lane either aided an ally or was used for roaming.

In our upcoming games, you might notice a traditional setup: one single lane alongside two double lanes, or a 1-3-1 formation where players move around and strategize attacks on side lanes. As the game evolves, we’ll observe how this changes the familiar Deadlock, but it’s a significant shift we’re looking at now.

The middle-level adversary continues to reside in its room, now positioned just beneath the heart of the mid lane. This setup enables players above to monitor if the boss is being attacked due to transparent windows. Movement speed has been boosted twice for swifter navigation across the map, and several game characters have undergone alterations and visual enhancements.

In Deadlock, the updates to the map aren’t the only novelty. Now, players no longer have to precisely kill enemy Troopers to summon Soul Orbs; instead, it has been adjusted to make farming Soul Orbs more manageable during the initial stages of the game (the laning phase).

The latest update on February 25th is crucial for Valve and Deadlock, as they are currently facing a challenging situation. An initial burst of excitement in September led to an enormous increase in active players. However, since then, the absence of significant updates or advancements has left many concerned. In fact, SteamDB reports that out of the 90% who played in September, only around 17,000 are still actively playing the game this past month.

Let’s find out who comes back after the map is refreshed and a streamlined version of the MOBA is implemented. There are many other changes that have been made, some of which are detailed in the complete Feb. 25 patch notes for Deadlock. The update can be downloaded immediately through Steam.

Full Deadlock patch notes for Feb. 25

Map Rework

  • The map has been redesigned around being 3 lanes rather than 4. This has a large range of accompanying map-wide changes regarding visuals, building layouts, pathways, neutral camps, air vents, breakables, powerup buffs, juke spots, mid boss, etc.
  • Added a new feature called “Explore Map” where you can run around an empty city to test movement and navigation. You can find this under the ‘Play’ menu.

Soul Orb Mechanics

  • Troopers no longer need to be last hit by a player in order to generate souls, as long as you are nearby. Troopers no longer have the “near death” flashing behavior.
  • Soul Orb lifetime in the air reduced significantly.
  • Soul Orb denies changed from 65/35% to 50/50%.
  • Soul Orb physical radius increased by 10%.
  • Reduced horizontal movement of soul orbs from troopers.
  • Gaining souls from kills now shows a visual effect of souls flying towards you.

Sprint

  • Default sprint speed increased from 0.5 to 1.0.
  • Sprint disable duration reduced from 5s to 4s when dealing/taking damage with heroes.
  • Sprint disable duration reduced from 5s to 0.5s when dealing/taking damage with non-heroes.

Sinner’s Sacrifice

  • Sinner’s Sacrifice no longer grants a random Golden Statue buff.
  • Sinner’s Sacrifice now has a looping timing window where if you kill it with a Heavy Melee (there are visual and audio cues), you will receive 3 Golden Statue buffs. Alternatively, a last hit with Light Melee will only give 1 Golden Statue Buff.

Game Feel and Optimizations

  • Added support for DLSS as an FSR2 alternative for temporal anti aliasing and upscaling. Requires an NVIDIA 2x-class GPU or above.
  • For Vulkan users, upgraded FSR2 to AMD’s new FSR3 temporal upscaler for sharper and more temporally stable output.
  • Enabled NVIDIA Reflex and AMD Anti-Lag 2.0 for reduced latency.
  • Client performance improvements.
  • Bicubic filtering for lightmaps at higher shadow quality settings.
  • Improve how we preload units to prevent shader compilation during gameplay.
  • Hero shader improvements.
  • Various netcode improvements
  • Increased tick rate from 60hz to 64hz to improve the precision of certain game calculations.
  • Improved client reporting to prevent incorrect prediction offsets to the server.
  • Improved accuracy of server lag compensation to prevent bullets from reporting false hit detection against enemies further in the past.
  • Improved timing of sever lag compensation to engage during the first phase of bullet creation which previously could have resulted in bullets origination from different positions on the server and client.
  • Improved accuracy of Soul Orb hitboxes to ensure they are in the correct position during client bullet prediction.
  • Improved various close range abilities having casting errors (Sticky Bomb, Soul Exchange, Combo, etc).

Miscellaneous

  • Increased post-laning trooper bounty to match the previous 4 lane global economy.
  • Changed flex slot requirements:
    • 1st flex slot changed from 3 Guardians down to 2 Guardians.
    • 2nd flex slot changed from 2 Walkers down to 1 Walker.
    • The last 2 flex slots are unchanged.
  • Small Neutral Camp respawn time reduced from 4 minutes to 3 minutes.
  • Mid Neutral Camp respawn time reduced from 6 minutes to 5 minutes.
  • Neutrals soul values reduced by 10% (overall camp count and frequency has been increased).
  • Side Walkers HP increased from 5,175 to 7,000.
  • Mid Walkers HP increased from 8,000 to 9,000.
  • Mid Boss HP and HP growth increased by 30%.
  • Outer Zipline speed increased by 15%.
  • Breakable soul values reduced by 5%.
  • All juke spots now have veils (the dead end closets with the mystery man infront).
  • Gun Powerup min/max Fire Rate increased from 10/30% to 15/35%.
  • Fixed Gun Powerup not scaling Ammo to 60% as intended.
  • Added a new Mid Boss Rejuvenator Symbol with three visual states (not spawned, under 1 min from spawn, and spawned).
  • The new large amount of breakables in the mid boss middle area now initially spawn at the same time as mid boss.
  • Holliday:
    • Bounce Pad damage reduced from 120 to 90.
    • Holliday: Bounce Pad T3 stun duration reduced from +1.25s to +1s.
    • Holliday: Spirit Lasso damage reduced from 120 to 90.
  • Superior Stamina:
    • No longer gives 7% fire rate.

Damage Report

  • Now visualizes the amount of damage reduced by resistances or shields.
  • Incoming Damage UI now visualizes general damage reduction and amplification.
  • Now shows the number of instances of damage done by each ability.
  • Damage Report no longer clears immediately upon respawn, but instead will keep the data from your previous life with an added “(Last Life)” label.
  • Breaking secondary stats out in the client Damage Report. (i.e. Shiv Serrated Knives now shows damage from initial hit and damage-over-time).
  • Defaulting damage report to compact mode when you initially take damage.
  • A variety of UI bugfixes and polish changes.

Quickbuy

  • Added the ability to right click on the header of a build category to add all items in that category to your Quickbuy queue.
  • Quickbuy’s default behavior is going back to showing purchase prompts when the item is actually purchased. A settings option has been added to show purchase prompts when the item is queued.
  • Fixed a bug where you could queue an item that was a component of an item you already own.
  • Fixed several bugs that caused items to be skipped when purchasing items with the Auto Buy option enabled.

Builds & Shop

  • Fixed a bug where purchasing an item would clear the item search box in the shop.
  • Fixed Steam profanity filter not being consistently applied to user-authored text in builds (names, descriptions, annotations).
  • You can now create builds on the dashboard.
  • You can now create ability builds by clicking on the ability icons in the skill build area (which is the only way you can do it on the dashboard) in addition to skilling them up in sandbox mode (where both work).
  • Fixed a bug where dragging and dropping items while editing a build would remove the annotation from the item.
  • Reworking default builds to assume items are bought in specified order.
  • Added Suggested AP path for Haze, Paradox, Shiv, and Yamato.

General changes

  • Ziplines are now curved.
  • If a player abandons a match before the 5 minute mark, the game will now bring up a green hud message: “This game will not be scored. It is now safe to leave.” If the abandon occurs after 5 minutes, the hud message will be: “This match can be abandoned without a penalty, but leaving will result in a loss.”.
  • Gun audio system updates attempt to balance powerful feel with ear fatigue more skillfully, also added some experiments for early reflection acoustics in weapon reports.
  • Players no longer collide with Bosses to prevent some unintended interactions.
  • Crouch toggle now ends on a failed dash.
  • Added positional tier 1 Guardian death sounds.
  • Added sounds for tier 1 Guardian melee swing, melee slam, and melee hit.
  • Added sounds for tier 1 Guardian activate from idle and deactivate to idle animations.
  • Added positional Walker death sounds.
  • Added sounds for Walker beam attack.
  • Added sounds for Walker stomp attack.
  • Added sounds for Walker rocket barrage attack.
  • Adjusted what counts as a headshot when shooting through non-head hitboxes.
  • Reduce duration of buff effect for gaining Ability Points.
  • Button hints now update when changing keybinds during a match.
  • Made bots better at purchasing and upgrading items.
  • Made bots better at not getting stuck in walls.
  • Adding row indicator if you’re on the global leaderboards. Also auto scroll to your position on the global leaderboards.
  • Taskbar icon only flashes once when you’re about to respawn.
  • The Walker’s area buff now shows up on the hud’s active stats section.
  • Adding support for pinging Ability 1-4 to be “almost ready” with supporting vo.
  • Hooking up generic “Item is Ready”, “Item is almost Ready”, and “Item is on cooldown” vo.
  • Added missing unique death vo sounds for: Fathom, Trapper, Wrecker, Raven, Sinclair, and Wraith.
  • Base attack music now starts immediately when an enemy enters the local player’s base (previously only when damage was dealt to an objective).
  • Damage audio does not play loudly if the player’s health is not changing.
  • Elevated ability hit confirmation sounds in the mix.
  • Players can no longer shoot or reload their weapon while climbing a rope.
  • Mix updates to deprioritize NPC, currency, and other sounds in base.
  • Protections added to low audio frequencies from building up and clouding the mix.
  • So as not to create unintended situations where you give away your position while hiding from combat the “you can’t hide from me” vo lines now only play for the speaker.
  • At the beginning of a match certain heroes will now chat with each other as they ride to battle. If a hero does not have a recorded conversation the patron will speak to them as they did previously.
  • Minor vo bug fixes that address things like missing ability lines, wrong names being called out in pings, etc.
  • Ping Update:
    • Pre-match, if you press the ping button your hero will play a random taunt. Not every hero has these lines yet.
    • Certain heroes now have several new options that can be added to the ping wheel including “Come with me”, “Rejuv’s Dropping”, “Cover Me”, “Nevermind”, “Press The Advantage”, “Not Ready To Teamfight”, “Let’s Hide Here”, “it’s Dangerous Here”, “I’ll Clear The Troopers”, “Let’s – Meet Here”, and “I’ll Flank ‘Em”.
    • The Green lane is now alternatively referred to as “Park” instead of “Greenwich”.
  • Added an effect for when you break bridge Powerups.
  • Sprint effects revisions to reduce noise.
  • Window materials now feature imposter interiors and improved glass reflection.
  • Added new signage to the world.
  • Added new railing smartprop to the world.
  • Added new oracle building model.
  • Added new buildings for the city backdrop.
  • Added under construction suspension bridge to yellow lane.
  • Improved blending of character and world shadows.
  • Improved lighting on city backdrop.
  • Added Bull/Bear statues to the jungle lane street for landmark callouts.
  • Ability Point effects revisions to reduce lingering noise.
  • Powerup spawner gained effects revisions to reduce lingering noise.
  • Zipline speed effect revisions.
  • Stunned debuff effect revisions.
  • Update last hit effects so that it reflects what is shown in the UI.
  • Changed minimum bot difficulty for some heroes.
  • Added chimes and bird sounds behind park gate.
  • Added looping sound to jump pads in the world.
  • Added neutral camp spawn sound.
  • Added permanent powerup spawn sound.
  • Added a global spawn sound for bridge buffs.

User Interface

  • Changed all language around ‘Hero Sandbox’ to ‘Hero Testing’.
  • Moved Private and Co-op bots to be bucketed under a single “Play Bot Match” button that splits into private vs co-op via selection modal.
  • Added a News Post popup panel to the main menu.
  • Added a link to Patch Notes to the main menu.
  • Commends are now right-aligned.
  • Enemy commends now auto-dismiss after a short duration.
  • Fixed both “Leave Match” and “Leave Spectating” showing when you hit Esc while watching a match.
  • Fixed a bug where abilities showed their imbued item multiple times.
  • Adding Status Effect Panels next to healthbar and in the bottom left to display certain modifier icons in these areas. You can hover them to see what the status effect is.
  • Adding Rejuvenator icon in the bottom left next to healthbar when you have the Rejuvenator.
  • Adding powerups to the bottom left hud area and removing the progress bar in the middle left of the hud.
  • Adding player speaking indicator on the minimap icon.
  • Changing default minimap values to make ziplines smaller and other minor adjustments to player icons.
  • Adding Health regen to active player stats on the left.
  • Updating images on the zipline prompt UI to match new colors.
  • Fixing wash-color on new inline glyphs for active items.
  • Adding logic to make default build categories double height when they go over 9 items in one category.
  • Matches that are safe to abandon now use the “Leave Match” label rather than “Abandon Match” in the escape menu.
  • Settings for Custom Matches (such as Enable Cheats, Bot Difficulty, etc.) now default to whatever was last used.

Today’s update brings a wealth of changes, such as enhancements to various hero content, bug corrections, upgrades to the Hero Lab, and much more. For comprehensive details, check out the official patch notes!

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2025-02-26 04:42

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