Arcen Games
Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: Wingflier on September 29, 2016, 12:02:50 pm
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Well, given that this has been the top-selling game on Steam for awhile now, and glowing reviews with 95%, I thought it was time to make a thread for it.
Battlerite deserves the actual name "Multiplayer Online Battle Arena" much more than the DotA-like games we've come to attribute that title to. That's because it's literally just an...online multiplayer battle arena. No creeps, no towers, no items, no base, no objectives, just pure arena-based combat.
Perhaps what makes Battlerite so interesting is that apparently it's a game purely based on skillshots. Even your auto attacks must be aimed. So I guess they're not really auto-attacks, they're more like "timed" attacks. Given that each character is essentially an almagamation of different skillshots, it goes without saying that the skill ceiling for the game is extremely high.
In addition to offensive skillshots, there are also many interesting defensive mechanics (some that remind me of fighting games) such as counter, which stuns the enemy if you get hit by an attack, block, reflect, or abilities that will make you invulnerable temporarily to dodge some massive form of damage.
Overall, I'm not sure this is the right audience for a game like this, but I thought I'd offer a discussion, because it's definitely a cool game.
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I'm gonna play it when it's free. Until then I wait. Don't want to buy another "This will turn to F2P anyway" game anymore.
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This reminds me of the old Angel arena on warcraft 3 battle.net custom games. I'm taking a wait-and-see approach.
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I've seen it, but... ehhhhh. It looks like something that's trying to be a fighting game while not quite grasping certain ideas.
Firstly, characters are way too slow. For something that's all skillshots (yet without the other trappings of a moba).... way too slow. WAY too slow. If I'm going with fighting games and such, this is slower-paced, in terms of character movement, than Street Fighter. Yet with attacks that are quite a bit faster than what's seen in that game. When it comes to dodging the devs seem to mostly be expecting you to do so with timed dodge abilities (sigh...). Even the idea of blocking attacks looks a little wonky here, for those characters that have some capability of doing so.
But then there's the thing that really kills it for me: This looks like something that's trying to be a fighting game.... where you *must* pair up with at least one other person to form a team. That ends up being sort of an instant "why would I play this when I could play any other freaking thing?" sort of idea. In a 2v2 game, skill goes utterly out the window (particularly when your characters are too slow for normal dodging of basic attacks) if your opponent dies/fails/quits/disconnects/trolls/something. The one and ONLY fighting game I've ever seen that even comes close to getting it right is the Smash Bros series, but even that... a lot of people really, really don't like matches that aren't 1v1 (which does include me, yes).
I dunno. Mobas deal with all of these issues by having so very much else going on besides JUST the combat; not to mention that the 5v5 nature of the combat makes the whole system work better in a general sense, at least to me. But this... eh. I know people will call it a moba but to me this is a fighting game since it has nothing else going on, and one with some bloody strange ideas.
Though, wether or not any of that matters is another story. I usually never, EVER pick up totally new multiplayer games like this when they come out for one reason: WAY too many of them just die off later as everyone goes back to the "big games" after awhile. Cant count the number of times that's happened now. Considering the lack of complexity here yet the fact that it clearly plays/looks and probably feels a lot like a typical moba, that might happen with this one too, it's hard to say. But it takes awhile to really find out. I just plain don't bother with multiplayer games unless they both have a very high player population, and actually KEEP that very high population.
That and this is a game that costs $20. People don't like PAYING for stuff these days. I'm kinda surprised this isn't f2p to begin with, really. If it was I might give it a try to see what it's like, but.... after having bought a whole pile of stuff recently I don't really want to fling any more money at Steam right now. I have to use their stupid store-bought cards lately, I'm so tired of those.
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It's a team based game because like all arenas, they finally figured out that making the character "unique" means giving them vulnerabilities. That means that 1 / 1 fighting is going to be decided by whoever has the best counter to his opponent and not skill (which evens out with ranking anyway).
About this game, I played it a bit and refunded. The game is nice. The issues are the same as in any MOBA / Arena there is, it expects you to know how the complete system works before playing, the entry ticket of enormous. You don't only need to learn each character but each possible combo. I don't have time to learn completely too many of that kind of games.
Another issue is the buttons. It's because of games like this that I see the UI genius blizzard games. Every character has special abilities but mostly they don't "match". For example, in Heroes of the storm, what I feel is that if a character has a capacity that's used often / life saving, it's the easiest button to reach. Not here. Here the "buttons" are rather random. Which makes learning each character painful to me.
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It's a team based game because like all arenas, they finally figured out that making the character "unique" means giving them vulnerabilities. That means that 1 / 1 fighting is going to be decided by whoever has the best counter to his opponent and not skill (which evens out with ranking anyway).
Actually basically every fighting game has this same thing despite being 1v1. At least with the 2D-style ones, I cant speak for Tekken and similar games (no bloody clue, I don't play those). Different specific matchups are typically considered pretty darned important by most pros as some characters cancel out others fairly well (this is why a lot of games, when played online, do not show you who the other player has chosen until the match is beginning; you cant just choose your character specifically to counter theirs. Similarly, some tournaments require that you choose a character and absolutely stick with them the entire time, or similar rules). The difference though is that enough skill can allow you to brute-force your way past said limitation anyway.
When it's well done, you never get into a position where the game is ONLY decided by the matchup. Which is good, because that's bloody boring. Again the idea works well when it's in a full-blown moba because there's just so many other factors involved. But here.... where it's hyper-focused on the combat, it ends up just seeming a bit lame to me. Not genuinely BAD, mind you, just.... dull.
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True, but still...
MOBA-style fighting game characters have about a dozen capacities top. Fighting games ? Many more. IMO that's what allows "brute forcing" skill, as you said.
That said, my experience in fighting game points to the character there being much less diverse than what MOBA does. When parry is in the game, generally all character have it. Their "attack" capabilities differ a lot though. Same with "avoid", "shield", "guard cancel"... there is some differences but as a whole in fighting games all character have the same defenses, or very similar ones. There is exceptions of course (fox in smash bros). In MOBA-style game ? Not so. Character differ a lot in both defense & offense capabilities. Which makes 1 vs 1 not "brute-forcable".
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Exactly.
And that's a big part of the problem. It's going for this concept that seems so similar to fighters... but it's missing much of, well... everything. It's cut out all of the stuff about mobas EXCEPT the fighting, yet also doesn't commit to it since it ends up NOT being extremely skill-based, what with still having things like full hard-counters (fighters don't go as far, or they'd break down), and a lot of attacks that are TECHNICALLY skillshots, but that, in practice, you're probably not dodging, because your characters are blocky and moving at the speed of a dead frog in sludge. And with no way to simply guard in a general sense, there's nothing you can do about that except get hit when it comes to that. That's not exactly very skill-ish.
Overall it just... doesn't seem very interesting as a result. Seems way too simplistic. And of course the big issue about having your ONE teammate screw up being 50% of your fighting force just outright gone, in a game not focused enough on skill (meaning you cannot make up for it and are almost guaranteed to lose), when you're in those 2v2 matches.
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It's cut out all of the stuff about mobas EXCEPT the fighting
Yes, but still. In games where the fighting is "MOBA-like", contrary to 1vs1 fighting game, a lot of the knowledge that's needed to win is how to interact / combo with other characters / teammates / counter opponent combos. That's still there. And, having tried, there seems to be a lot of possibilities in the game. The devs of that game made Bloodline Champions and were succesful with it. They know what's they're doing. However, if you're into 1VS1, that's not going to be a game you'd like. And, like all team games, good luck finding a random buddy that combos like you'd wish...
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I don't think it's quite fair to say that a sport or game in which teamwork is involved is somehow less competitive or skill-based. One could argue that it's actually more skill-based because it considers not only the skill of the individual, but the skill of the team as well. A team of individually less skillful players that have superior teamwork can beat teams of superior individual players. Kind of reminds me of the anime Kuroko no Basket. Definitely worth the watch if you get a chance.
I could understand how it might be a personal preference not to want to play on teams with other people (because people are retarded, I'll be the first to admit). However, with good teammates these games can be incredibly fun and skill-based.
I also don't agree with you that it isn't skill-based because it strays from the fighting game formula. That's like the argument that Magic the Gathering isn't skill-based because there's luck involved. Yet somehow, the best players tend to overcome that luck and win tournament after tournament. The same can be said for the best BLC players. There isn't luck in Bloodrite, but just because it has different mechanics than a fighting game doesn't mean skill has been removed. I would say that the skill is more about timing and adapting to the situation than reaction speed and muscle memory like it is in fighting games. Most RTS games are nowhere near as fast or micro-intensive as the Starcraft series, but it's not fair to say that just because there are slow, large-scale RTS games, they must require no skill.
I think it just comes down to personal preference. Some people may not like how Bloodrite feels, but overall, I think it has been rather deserving of its glowing praise.
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It has nothing to do with wether it's close or not to fighting game mechanics; that's just a way of explaining part of it.
In the end, it boils down to the thing I tend to judge *everything* by: Is there a way to genuinely dodge (or block) X set of attacks WITHOUT using a timer skill? If no.... then it has problems. And in this case, the answer is definitely no, as the characters are WAY too freaking slow for that without using some skill with a timer. And they cannot guard in any fashion without a timer skill either, so that's another no... Typically, that's enough negatives to kill any game for me, no matter what it is. Mobas have always been the one and only exception to this for me... but that's because they do so many other things. The combat in those is just the tip of the iceberg. Without those things, this just falls apart for me.
As far as team-skill VS whatever goes, that part I don't actually care about all that much. HOWEVER, the fact that the basics don't allow for all that much skill in terms of defense really does mean that you just plain cant make up for it very much if your teammate makes a moron of themselves. That is a problem, for those that will have to play this alone, particularly when that other player is literally half of your "team".
Now I do agree with your analogy with the RTS bits... yes, just because an RTS doesn't have all that wild clicking, doesn't mean it doesn't take as much skill as, say, StarCraft. HOWEVER, that's because, like with AI War, those are typically making up for it in other ways. They tore out the wild clicking in StarCraft, and totally replaced it with other stuff. That "other stuff" makes them what they are. This game... isn't doing that. It *just* took 95% of the stuff out of the moba side of the game. What it didn't do is put anything in place of that. That's part of why I use the fighting game analogy here, because the simplicity is at that level; the difference though is that fighters go to that level of "nothing else happening here" and then shove tons of "technical" skill on top of it (regardless of the speed of the game in question; Street Fighter may as well be a brick in mud, but it still does this just fine). This didn't do any of that (again, attacks that cant be avoided/blocked without spells/skills are a prime sign of that).
The idea of "luck" is actually totally separate. That doesn't have anything to do with it, far as I can tell.
Overall, I dunno. It just looks like a moba without 95% of the freaking game, yet with absolutely nothing to make up for it (except small teams, which for the reasons already stated just makes it seem worse to me). And then with lots of "don't have X skill off timer? Well ya aint dodging this then" piled on top.
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Is there a way to genuinely dodge (or block) X set of attacks WITHOUT using a timer skill? If no.... then it has problems. And in this case, the answer is definitely no
Hum, I disagree with that. That's because team >> I in those kind of games. Your character are slow and can't avoid ? It's because it's your healer / buffer / whatever jobs to do the block for you, or put a shield, or heal, or cancel the enemy's shot. Between the time where the shot started, and it connects, he's got to put the shield there. During that time, you've got to make sure that all of your shot connects to the right target, and / or don't get cancelled. Crazy reflexes and / or good game sense is necessary there.
That dimension is completely absent from 1 vs 1 games. As the character all have to be able to cancel / guard, they all do, and have the same defense moves. Which I'm not fond of, because designing character then just is about how they hit.
It just looks like a moba without 95% of the freaking game
Frankly, MOBA have been moving toward "more team fights, less creep fight" for a decade now. Thing is that MOBAs like LoL or Dota have so much possibilities that the best players maybe know 5% of the game. And there are patches / new character / others changes every week or so. Given the choice, I'd rather play a game where the best players actually know 60% of the game. Which is why I prefer heroes of the storm to other MOBAs. They removed a lot of the "complexity" that was unneeded (killshots, denial, characters able to one shot the entire team by itself...).
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In the end, it boils down to the thing I tend to judge *everything* by: Is there a way to genuinely dodge (or block) X set of attacks WITHOUT using a timer skill? If no.... then it has problems.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, your issue is with games that don't have a 'dodge on demand' or 'block on demand' mechanic, as you seem to have a problem with these mechanics when they are on some kind of cooldown. You view this as problematic.
This would be my response:
1. Given that Battlerite is somewhat of a MOBA + Fighting Game hybrid, this isn't that surprising. In MOBAs there is no way to dodge or block your opponent's attacks, and your attacks can never miss (unless there is a buff/debuff that grants evasion/block).
2. In Battlerite, though the characters can't move as fast as you'd obviously like, it's misleading to say that you can't dodge attacks by simply moving out of the way. Ranged attacks and spells have travel times, and can be easily avoided, especially at long distances, even without using a skill. Melee attacks are harder to dodge, but the character has to be practically on top of you to use them. Given all the ways you can kite your opponent, slow them, stun them, or simply create distance between them, the ability to avoid melee attacks is less about dodging them, and more about never letting them get in range to begin with. As a melee character it's a bit different, which brings up my next point:
3. Just because there isn't a 'dodge-on-demand' feature, it does not logically follow that the game is less skill based. One could simply argue that the skill is more about using your cooldowns efficiently to dodge, block, or parry when necessary, instead of simply having the reaction speed to do it at your leisure, whenever you'd like.
Which goes back to a point I made in a previous post, that Battlerite is more about timing and efficiency where fighting games are often more about quick reflexes and reaction speed.
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Hum, I disagree with that. That's because team >> I in those kind of games. Your character are slow and can't avoid ? It's because it's your healer / buffer / whatever jobs to do the block for you, or put a shield, or heal, or cancel the enemy's shot. Between the time where the shot started, and it connects, he's got to put the shield there. During that time, you've got to make sure that all of your shot connects to the right target, and / or don't get cancelled. Crazy reflexes and / or good game sense is necessary there.
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Were this a game with a large team, I might agree with you. However, that dynamic basically vanishes when you have ONE teammate; even with two it's still there to a decent degree. 4 or 5 would make a hell of a lot more sense here (and, in part, is why HotS works so well; there's still SOME complexity, yet you have enough teammates to keep the combat side of the complexity raised a bit to replace what was lost). One pure healer and one pure fighter VS two pure fighters are likely to lose in a combat-only scenario. Why? Because a pure healer cant even go one-on-one with a fighter type in games like this, let alone last at all long one-on-two. Simply having the two fighters utterly ignore the sole fighter on the other team and just chase the healer around pretty much ends it. Particularly in a game where, if enemies are constantly on top of you, you cant really do all that much about it without defensive help (which a fighter-type cant really provide). Once the healer is down, the rest is easy. Not to mention that in videos I've seen, the whole "healer saves you" thing actually didn't appear to be even close to as big in this game as in others. A lot of attacks, thusly, remain genuinely unstoppable much of the time because of a lack of pure defense. As for requiring reflexes for that type of defense, that's... hmm. I always kinda want to debate that, as I tend to think games like this are slow as dirt, but at the same time I'm aware my reaction speed is abnormal, so it's hard to say.
That dimension is completely absent from 1 vs 1 games. As the character all have to be able to cancel / guard, they all do, and have the same defense moves. Which I'm not fond of, because designing character then just is about how they hit.
Actually, that's not even close to being the case. ANY fighting game worth it's salt is going to give characters both offensive AND defensive moves. As well as moves that can function as both. Tager, for instance, from Blazblue. He's a huge, heavy type, the sort that has giant throw moves (the type that require the nasty double-circle command that is so hard to learn). The problem for him is that he's an enormous target, very easy to hit, moves very, very slowly, and has a lot of trouble with ranged characters and aerial attacks (which he's terrible at). He's got to get CLOSE to really do his thing. But he has moves that can help with this. There's one move that causes him to enter a "charging" animation, filling a meter that, when full, allows him to fire his ONE projectile (cant fire very often since it takes so much charging). The thing about that charge move though is that it gives him auto-guard during the animation (vulnerable before and after though). He can use this to stop enemy projectiles while preparing his own, and when that meter of his is filled, his opponent is pretty much forced to change their tactic (since his projectile is *very* fast and causes side-effects if it hits, it can cancel enemy shots too, just plowing right through them). Both of these two moves are just as much about defending as they are about attacking, though the charge move has zero use whatsoever in combos. Or his air grab, where he simply reaches up into the air, and if someone is there, smashes them to the ground. Yes, this can be used in combos, but it's true purpose is as anti-air defense. Other characters are better at this (his move is hard to use right) but it's still something, and it gives aerial players something that they have to consider when dealing with him. Yet it has zero function as a combo-starter when not in a defending-against-air-attacks situation.
And the important thing about those moves is that they are defensive options that nobody else has. Games like this are not JUST about blocking and basic moving, when it comes to defense. There's quite a lot to them. Dodging and blocking everything is fun and all, but if that were as deep as it got, they wouldn't be nearly as fun/interesting. So most characters have their own unique defenses that supplement the ones that everyone has. Those types of moves also give you options against otherwise unblockable attacks. Someone that has a guard-shattering attack, for instance, could be stopped by the opponent using a counter-attack special (which typically no melee attack can break). But if the counter-user just blocked, they'd get slammed. Characters without counters would be forced to dodge or interrupt, not block, they wouldn't have that option.
That sort of thing is what I mean. One on one games inherently have less complexity than full team games, absolutely. But when done right they very much make up for it in other areas of their design. I get the impression that this one is supposed to be a bit on the more casual side (makes sense, MANY players think mobas are much too hardcore) but yeah, I think it goes a bit too far with it.
At some point I might try it out for myself, but... right now with certain other games having appeared those are definitely a priority.
Frankly, MOBA have been moving toward "more team fights, less creep fight" for a decade now. Thing is that MOBAs like LoL or Dota have so much possibilities that the best players maybe know 5% of the game. And there are patches / new character / others changes every week or so. Given the choice, I'd rather play a game where the best players actually know 60% of the game. Which is why I prefer heroes of the storm to other MOBAs. They removed a lot of the "complexity" that was unneeded (killshots, denial, characters able to one shot the entire team by itself...).
Actually I agree completely with this, believe it or not. These aspects drive me up the wall. They're also why I stopped playing Dota specifically (things like denial, uuuugh). I think hyper-simplifying the mechanics is the wrong approach though (thus my complaints here), BUT, they do need to be more streamlined. Mobas tend to go TOO far with extraneous stuff when they don't need to. I actually think it's a huge problem with the genre. It kinda reminds me of fighting games again: Guilty Gear X2, which had a couple of very specific mechanics that only the best of the best were even CAPABLE of using, let alone knowing about. You had to be a freaking MASTER to use the second type of cancel in the game, and doing so gave you access to tons more combos than normal players could use. It was a great example of going too damn far, despite how much I loved that game. Blazblue fortunately took that out, and things stopped being derpy in that particular way, yet it did so in such a way that didn't dilute the depth. I'd LOVE to see mobas do this more. Right now, I do think that HotS is the one that's closest to getting it right.
Also yes I haaaaate when you get the whole "one player carries a team" thing in these. Yes, I get WHY it's there, but still, it's always bugged me. Even if it is something that your team must specifically work towards (feeding that player enough).
So if I'm understanding you correctly, your issue is with games that don't have a 'dodge on demand' or 'block on demand' mechanic, as you seem to have a problem with these mechanics when they are on some kind of cooldown. You view this as problematic.
This would be my response:
1. Given that Battlerite is somewhat of a MOBA + Fighting Game hybrid, this isn't that surprising. In MOBAs there is no way to dodge or block your opponent's attacks, and your attacks can never miss (unless there is a buff/debuff that grants evasion/block).
2. In Battlerite, though the characters can't move as fast as you'd obviously like, it's misleading to say that you can't dodge attacks by simply moving out of the way. Ranged attacks and spells have travel times, and can be easily avoided, especially at long distances, even without using a skill. Melee attacks are harder to dodge, but the character has to be practically on top of you to use them. Given all the ways you can kite your opponent, slow them, stun them, or simply create distance between them, the ability to avoid melee attacks is less about dodging them, and more about never letting them get in range to begin with. As a melee character it's a bit different, which brings up my next point:
3. Just because there isn't a 'dodge-on-demand' feature, it does not logically follow that the game is less skill based. One could simply argue that the skill is more about using your cooldowns efficiently to dodge, block, or parry when necessary, instead of simply having the reaction speed to do it at your leisure, whenever you'd like.
Which goes back to a point I made in a previous post, that Battlerite is more about timing and efficiency where fighting games are often more about quick reflexes and reaction speed.
Hmm, not quite. It's hard to get my point across in this specific instance as I'm hitting that situation where I'm not quite sure how to explain what I'm thinking here while still making sense.
Point two is easy to talk about though. Think of a character that uses rapidfire ranged attacks with fast projectiles. Enough spraying of those, and unless you're ALREADY far enough away, you cant really do much about them. You can waddle around to hopefully throw your opponent off their aim, but the reality is that when you've got characters moving this slowly, and projectiles moving fast, it just isn't at all hard to hit (and I did indeed see a character doing this; heck if I know which one).
I could actually bring up shmups here, since that's where I get so many concepts. Psikyo's games, for instance, are absolutely notorious for having this issue. If you're in the wrong place *before* certain attacks fired (and those attacks, from anything, have no tells or cues for you to spot, with no exceptions) you *will* get hit. No amount of skill in the world will dodge those. None. You have to be effectively "defending" and dodging *before* the attack is fired. This breaks a lot of rules, to me (and was absolutely not allowed with Starward). Well made games in that genre tend to have slow-ish bullets for that very reason.... even if the game is something like Giga Wing, where you have a major defensive move that you can use pretty often. In that game, that defensive move has a cooldown, but despite it being so important... the patterns are always, ALWAYS technically still avoidable. That's important.
It's the same with fighters, too. If a character has some sort of attack/setup/combo that ABSOLUTELY requires some sort of ability on the part of the defender that can only sometimes be used, the character is instantly qualified as "broken" and often restricted from some tournaments; that's how bad that issue gets.
In mobas, this stuff works out though because of the fact that teams are a full 5 members. Even if there's one specialized defender character on a team, you STILL have options if they're knocked out. When faced with something that you yourself cannot stop, you still have 3 other teammates that can, in various ways, pitch in to save you from that, and most of the time a good team composition will make certain of this. This is part of why I keep going on about this specific game being 2v2 instead of 5v5.
There is more ideas to point out beyond that, but I'm having trouble articulating that for the moment. I'll post about those if I think up a way to say them that doesn't sound like nonsense.
Bloody interesting topic, this, I have to say.
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Were this a game with a large team, I might agree with you. However, that dynamic basically vanishes when you have ONE teammate; even with two it's still there to a decent degree. 4 or 5 would make a hell of a lot more sense here (and, in part, is why HotS works so well; there's still SOME complexity, yet you have enough teammates to keep the combat side of the complexity raised a bit to replace what was lost). One pure healer and one pure fighter VS two pure fighters are likely to lose in a combat-only scenario.
Still works with one teammate, because they removed the "only heal" archetypes though. No character's "pure" when it comes to capability. But yes, I agree that if they did't, you'd need larger teams =).
Actually, that's not even close to being the case. ANY fighting game worth it's salt is going to give characters both offensive AND defensive moves.
Hum, yes, it is, but... I'm probably putting "it's the same" where you see differences because you know the genre a lot more. As an example I know well, I'd go for smash bros. Nearly all characters got shields, the rolling escape move, the in-flight escape move, and the in flight "catch-up" to a platform move. I say nearly because of that dumb fox - there is probably a few others. The last smash bros I played was a long while ago. Still, there's a set of common move that restrains the design. As you stated, some characters have capabilities that help defending... like Pikachu's thunder attacks doubling as a defense move for aerials or when being pursed... but still on most character in whataver fighting game I've seen up to now, there is a common defense set that most character have. It's here for a reason, I don't dispute that. I just don't like it =).
On everything else, well basically. I agree or don't, but don't have anything to add :D.
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The slow movement is what really kills it for me. Everything is so gloriously sluggish. It's the same reason I can't stand LoL and Dota.