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.
