Moba balance comparison, please comment

[tigersfan]

This. So many times this. I wish more gamers would realize this. I can imagine having a hyper-competitive mindset in ranked games, but when you are in casual, why do you even bother? I mean, even if people on my team screw up to no end, I rarely, if ever, complain in chat. I might swear IRL, but I'll never let that go out over my fellow players, unless I'm having a really bad day and am just incapable of controlling myself.

Or if the team mate is a friend and is on mumble with you. :p

[Mánagarmr]

Mostly I just complain and curse at Timmy, because he's just so funny to berate

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Mostly I just complain and curse at Timmy, because he's just so funny to berate

I sensed a disturbance in the force over here and it seems this is why.

Why? Why is it so funny to berate me?! It's like I have this disease that never goes away even post HS.

[Wingflier]

Not letting "playing to win" get in the way of "playing for fun" is important, but there's another factor involved.

Generally speaking, tactical situations are most interesting when it's a close fight.  Doesn't mean the sides have to be "balanced", in that a vastly inferior force in a great position can do remarkably well in an exciting way.  But if it's just a stomp because the battle was won "before it started" then the tactical excitement is much lower.

It's not even a matter of losing not being fun.  If you play 20 games and 10 are "we got completely stomped, no contest at any point" and the other 10 are "they got completely stomped, no contest at any point" then it's not nearly as exciting as close fights.

Smite sounds like the kind of game where you can still have fun doing that, particularly early on, but in a genre where people are used to being able to play thousands of matches and still enjoy it... well, the fun of simply-playing-it may not hold out.

Of course, it doesn't sound like it's quite so bad as to have a run of 20 "no contest" games, and I imagine the matchmaking will get better with time

Pretty much this.

If you were looking for a casual experience where you weren't challenged at all, you probably wouldn't be playing a MOBA in the first place.

Since you are playing a MOBA, chances are you're looking for relatively even games in which both teams have a reasonable chance of winning. People who say "why can't people just enjoy playing the game" don't really seem to understand the mentality behind playing in this genre. If you wanna just play something to have fun, go play Diablo 3, or Sim City, or Tomb Raider or any other of tens of thousands of games that don't require a competitive mentality or the desire to be challenged to win.

[Mánagarmr]

If you were looking for a casual experience where you weren't challenged at all, you probably wouldn't be playing a MOBA in the first place.

Since you are playing a MOBA, chances are you're looking for relatively even games in which both teams have a reasonable chance of winning. People who say "why can't people just enjoy playing the game" don't really seem to understand the mentality behind playing in this genre. If you wanna just play something to have fun, go play Diablo 3, or Sim City, or Tomb Raider or any other of tens of thousands of games that don't require a competitive mentality or the desire to be challenged to win.

True enough, but "playing to win" STILL doesn't mean "be a douchebag to anyone who isn't MLG level".

[Cyborg]

If you were looking for a casual experience where you weren't challenged at all, you probably wouldn't be playing a MOBA in the first place.
...

If you wanna just play something to have fun, go play Diablo 3, or Sim City, or Tomb Raider or any other of tens of thousands of games that don't require a competitive mentality or the desire to be challenged to win.

Isn't that awfully elitist? I have known more than a few people who are not particularly good at these games who just want to play. In fact, the team-based nature of it allows people to shield their own ego even when they are terrible at the game. Every once in a while, someone with a girl's name joins, and the insults of "go play the Sims" start coming in, because apparently this is a serious game for only serious players.


My personal opinion is go join a league or a clan if you want serious gaming of like-minded individuals. It's as intelligent as banging your head on a brick wall to expect a massive game population to always be above average gamers. By definition, there's going to be average, and by definition, there's going to be below average. You have to be able to play with all of them, and in my opinion the most successful gamers are the ones who make other players better, and not just their own scores.


I think also what happens with this kind of team game is, people have unrealistic expectations of being the hero that carries every round, how awesome they are, and they break their own wrist patting themselves on the back. This genre attracts narcissist gamers who really need an audience (the other nine people playing) for their own perceived awesomeness. Legends in their own minds. How many people play this game because they want to have nice social gaming session with other people? "Let's go meet the nice people on dota!" Of course not. It's more like, let's dominate and show off for nine other people.


I enjoy playing these games now and then, but I despise the average personality who plays them.

[keith.lamothe]

I've enjoyed playing some moba games against the AI (and derive great glee from getting like 50 kills in a bots game with Ryze in LoL or whatever) but yea: the chances of my actually hopping into a vs-bots game with randomly-selected other people (much less a vs-people game) is very low because even the relatively reasonable people I've seen talk about it take a fairly "no excuses" approach to team play. 

My internet connection, for example, is pretty good but it does drop here and there particularly in some MP games (like Terraria, even LAN for some reason seems to nuke the connection... anyway).  That would be a problem if people are looking for no excuses.

I also have three kids, and in any given 15-minute period there's a definitely non-zero chance they'll need attention of some sort on essentially zero notice.  That would be a problem if people are looking for no excuses.

That's even before getting into questions of me simply not being good at the game, or folks being nasty.  Those are theoretically avoidable problems.  But the general expectations of team members seem reasonable, so I avoid disappointing others or frazzling myself by simply not playing them on random teams.

All that to say, social pathologies aside, it's ok for different game communities to have different expectations of players.

Though in practice there are much bigger problems going on which kind of dwarf those distinctions.

[Wingflier]

If you were looking for a casual experience where you weren't challenged at all, you probably wouldn't be playing a MOBA in the first place.

Isn't that awfully elitist? I have known more than a few people who are not particularly good at these games who just want to play.

It's not elitist. I said nothing about being good at the game. I don't know where you got that from.

I said that if you are playing in this genre (MOBA), then you probably have a desire to be challenged. You probably get some enjoyment out of being challenged. That has nothing to do with whether or not you're good at the game.

The argument that, at least for DotA, people play it just to win every game and never be challenged is self-defeating. If someone's goal really was just to win every game without being challenged, they could simply create a new Steam account every time they began to be matched against teams of equal skill levels. Fortunately this doesn't happen that often. People continue to play even though the MM system puts them at or around games of their skill level. There is nothing elitist about recognizing this.

The people I was referring to specifically was those who were saying, "Some people just want to have fun." I agree, everyone wants to have fun, but in this genre it's heavily implied that "fun" equates to having an equally balanced game where both sides stand a chance of winning.

I think also what happens with this kind of team game is, people have unrealistic expectations of being the hero that carries every round, how awesome they are, and they break their own wrist patting themselves on the back. This genre attracts narcissist gamers who really need an audience (the other nine people playing) for their own perceived awesomeness. Legends in their own minds. How many people play this game because they want to have nice social gaming session with other people? "Let's go meet the nice people on dota!" Of course not. It's more like, let's dominate and show off for nine other people.

I think this attitude is elitist, because you're basically calling tens of millions of people narcissists who need to prove their own dominance over others.

I don't see it like that at all. I think this genre attracts people who want to be intellectually challenged and who enjoy working with others to accomplish a team objective. That doesn't make them narcissistic at all and I think it's pretty terrible of you to say that.

Are there narcissistic gamers in the genre? Yes, and in every other genre as well.

[Kahuna]

If you wanna just play something to have fun, go play Diablo 3, or Sim City, or Tomb Raider or any other of tens of thousands of games that don't require a competitive mentality or the desire to be challenged to win.

Because one can't have fun and take the game seriously (but not too seriously) at the same time.

I think this genre attracts people who are intellectually challenged

FTFY

and who enjoy working with others to accomplish a team objective.

Me big
You small
Me win
You lose
Me report
You n00b
Barf

[Mánagarmr]

As much as Kahuna's post makes me laugh, this DOES happen in MOBAs. Thankfully we're so far pretty spared from it in Smite due to the small player base, but it does happen. Thankfully, most people seem sensible enough to go "Oh, you're an asshole, so just let me report you for harassment" and that gets taken care of. But MOBAs do have one of the most toxic player bases there is. There's really only one other player base that is worse; Call of Duty.

[Cyborg]

There's really only one other player base that is worse; Call of Duty.

True story. Call of Duty has the extra challenge of people being able to hear you, so any kind of difference they can pick out: race, gender, age, whatever's going on in the background, it's all used against you in the usual, vile internet bullying that goes on in these games. Again, as I said before, it goes back to everyone wanting to be the hero and putting down everyone else.

[Kahuna]

Call of Duty.

http://youtu.be/7Fm5s28CM6c?t=3m14s

[Wingflier]

As much as Kahuna's post makes me laugh, this DOES happen in MOBAs. Thankfully we're so far pretty spared from it in Smite due to the small player base, but it does happen. Thankfully, most people seem sensible enough to go "Oh, you're an asshole, so just let me report you for harassment" and that gets taken care of. But MOBAs do have one of the most toxic player bases there is. There's really only one other player base that is worse; Call of Duty.

I'll admit that the Smite community is pretty nice compared to some of the other ones, though it is still in beta so we'll see what happens once it goes public

Still though, the typical raging, tourettes, unforgiving player is the minority in these kinds of games. I don't think it attracts people like this, I think the genre is just so dang competitive that it brings out that side of people. Most people just aren't put into that kind of competitive environment in their daily lives, but suffice it to say that many people I know would act just the same way if they were. Why do you think there's rules against this kind of behavior in most professional sports?

One word: Hockey. I rest my case.

[Mánagarmr]

Alright, after having played a few smurf games and watched a few smurf videos (mostly from people just playing support and HELPING the "noobs" rather than facepwning everything because "lol noobs", leaving seems really common at low levels. Usually when the games starts going south for one of the teams, at least 2 people seem to leave the game, never to come back.

[Wingflier]

Alright, after having played a few smurf games and watched a few smurf videos (mostly from people just playing support and HELPING the "noobs" rather than facepwning everything because "lol noobs", leaving seems really common at low levels. Usually when the games starts going south for one of the teams, at least 2 people seem to leave the game, never to come back.

I wasn't going to say anything cuz I feel like I've already complained too much about Smite, but yeah, they need harsher punishments on leavers. A 30 minute MM cooldown isn't really anything if you can just leave and do something else for awhile. I'm level ~15 and there are leavers in like literally EVERY game.

In DotA if you or ANYONE in the party you queued with leaves, there's a massive punishment after only a couple times. You're put in the "low-priority" queue where it takes forever to find a game, you aren't rewarded for your acheivements at the end (like in normal games), and most importantly, in a hilarious twist of irony, you're forced to play with other leavers such as yourself. The last part is by far the worst part of the punishment. The people who are too impatient to finish a game or who often rage quit tend to be less intelligent, more ragey, and overall not very fun to play with.

It gets worse though. DotA not only forces you to play with these people, but you can't just "wait" the timer out like you used to be able to. You have to play a set number of games, and STAY TIL THE END if you want to get out of low priority. It's literally soul-crushing.

HoN's punishment is arguably even worse, because if you get into their "leaver status" zone, you can't even use the matchmaking system anymore. You're basically stuck with leavers and ragers indefinitely.

So yeah, Smite needs to step it up a notch.