My opinion: I played a couple of rounds and felt a bit "lost?". Not in a where I am in the map, but as to what needs doing, in what order. There isn't a lot of feedback loop reward to remind you that your doing the right thing to help focus new players like me on what we should be doing next.
If you haven't played a moba this is normal at first. The game sense comes with experience. The more you play the more patterns emerge and you figure out the flow, that's part of what makes them so addicting because you have to put actually effort in to get any reward and once you are rewarded that's a feeling you want again lol
The core loop is just push your lane, get more powerful, push your lane. If you're doing that, you're doing your part.
You can detour into other things, getting kills for greater rewards in terms of exp/currency, visiting other lanes to help defend/push them, etc.
And the minutae of what items and abilities to get, when, and in which order, etc, is the stuff you learn by playing, asking others, reading guides, etc.
Same boat. This is the first MOBA I've played, at first I didn't really know what to do and still don't exactly know what some of the events do ~50 hours in.
I like the combat and movement mechanics but I have a hard time prioritizing what I should be doing at any given moment. Feels like information overload trying to pay attention to the lanes, other players, farming efficiently, and deciding which items I should buy next. This surprised me as a Dota enjoyer. I think the skill ceiling will be ridiculously high.
It feels straight up satisfying to play and with some more familiarity and quality of life improvements I'm sure I'll eventually be hooked.
I agree, the readability of what exactly is happening across the whole game or even what's directly around you can be difficult, but I feel like UI is probably something thar still has a lot of work to be done and is probably a lower priority right now so it's understandable.
Mechanically I think the game is pretty good. Nice movement, fun and well designed skills and a great map design with lots of traversal options and verticality.
For myself, I find myself struggling a bit. I haven't played a ton of games yet, so maybe my MMR isn't properly stabilised, but I'm consistently having issues with farming. On lane I know it's partially down to my aim, but the bigger issue is end of the laning phase and into the mid game, when team fights and pushing start happening and everyone moves all over the map. I'm really having trouble picking up farm while simultaneously participating and often fall behind dramatically here. And the game is a big struggle when you're outfarmed. Which I guess folds into my primary criticism of the game in general so far - it feels very snowbally.
But I don't know, it could be I'm just getting too old for fast paced shooters.
I've found that opportunistically killing the NPC creatures as I move around the map helps.
You could also try running the soul urn.
It spawns on one of the altars close to the middle of the outermost lanes, and you have to take it to the other one. You lose all offensive abilities while carrying it, but successfully delivering it nets you a shitload of souls, and an ability point.
The urn is also something you can use to help the team counter a snowballing enemy team, as I think it provides souls for your teammates, too.
Use me as an example of someone who doesn't play these types of games, I'm sure it's amazing to those who like it but,
tbh it's just mid.
The weapons feel unsatisfying and (so far) the characters seem very similar. These are all aspects that TF2 NAILED so it's weird seeing valve struggling with them. I haven't played a lot of similar games and deadlock is my first but imo it's just boring compared to TF2 or Deep Rock Galactic which are pretty much my #1 games
This game isn't trying to be tf2 it's a moba. Lol deep rock galactic is a pve game. None of them are anything like deadlock. Of you dint like dota or league of legends then you might not like it. Do you even understand how the games go like the objectives because it seems like you don't even understand the genre
I'm a TF2 player trying the game that caused my community to struggle through 8+ years of literally 80% of current players being bots.
13 games IN A ROW of fully botted lobbies at the peak.
Heard there was a new Valve shooter, gave it a try, and can't say I understand what all the hype is about.