Author Topic: Moba balance comparison, please comment  (Read 183211 times)

Offline Misery

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #510 on: March 13, 2014, 08:30:12 pm »
If you can determine the outcome of the entire match solely on your pick before it even begins...I see that as VERY poor design.


Aye, I can agree with this to some degree.

And the sheer inflexibility of Dota's heroes compared to characters of pretty much all of the others has always seemed to me to be one of the biggest contributors to that.  I think that's why stats like "Ability power" exist in the others.  In the other ones, a super-hard counter isnt so easy to do.... I might see that my opponent has chosen someone that my character is typically bad against, but I can say "Oh geez, he picked THAT guy.  That guy is trouble for my character.  Normally my character is a physical-attack carry, but I'll try going with this other build where I can be more of a nuker from range with the right items".   That's something that I just dont see in Dota much.  In Dota your heroes typically are stuck in whatever potential roles they're designed for.... some players may find a way to use them in a role they're NOT designed for, but as a rule they tend to be very inferior at all times to those that ARE designed for it.  Abilities/spells make up the core of what a character can and cannot do, and in Dota you cant do anything to them in the slightest.

In the others though, you can usually do lots of possible things without becoming weak in said role, though you still have to consider it anyway;  my guy might be pretty effective in that ranged nuker role, but is probably best at that carry role, so it still remains situational.   But it's also DOABLE. 


I'm fine with there being some advantage/disadvantage at start, but.... only to a certain point.  Beyond that, it just gets derpy.  It's something that bugs me in fighting games as well (only in badly designed/balanced ones though).  I dont want this giant starting advantage against my opponent.... it's boring.  Definitely always prefer a more even playing field at the start.

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #511 on: March 14, 2014, 02:53:56 pm »
If you can determine the outcome of the entire match solely on your pick before it even begins...I see that as VERY poor design.
There's a difference between determining the outcome and getting a massive advantage.

It's just a matter of the skill game starting before the picks are done.  If you have way more skill at laning than your opponent in the lane then you can often translate that into a massive advantage.  Similarly, if you have way more skill at hero picks than your opponents, you can translate that into a massive advantage.

Determining the outcome is beyond any of that, though.  I'm guessing there have been situations out there where it wouldn't have mattered if one team somehow accidentally picked creeps to control instead of heroes, they still could have won :)
I think Keith understands it.

The picking/banning phase is certainly important, and it can have a huge impact on the rest of the game, but personal and team skill is also a huge factor as well.

Like I said before, in the Sigma vs. Na'Vi game I posted which started this discussion, I thought Na'Vi was done for. I couldn't see a scenario in which they won the game because, in spite of being easily one of the best teams in the world, they were at such a disadvantage in the mid to late game.

Problem is, it never made it that far. Their completely unexpected quad lane gave them such a massive early game dominance that they secured the victory.

So while I understand Managarmr's perspective, and respect it, I personally think the picking phase of DotA adds an extra layer of strategy and complexity that the other games don't offer, or at least not to nearly the same degree. It's like an intellectual chess match happening before the game even begins.

Quote
And the sheer inflexibility of Dota's heroes compared to characters of pretty much all of the others has always seemed to me to be one of the biggest contributors to that.
I guess I don't agree with this either. I think out of all the games I've played, DotA may have the most flexible roles, unless you count Strife in which the classical roles have more or less been removed.

As an example, Mirana can lane mid, top solo, bot solo, bot support, bot carry, makes a great trilaner, or heck, she can choose not to lane at all and simply roam around the map setting up ganks with her arrow. Windrunner is similar in this regard. Heroes like Tidehunter can be played mid, solo offlane, or support. In fact there are too many examples to list of heroes that can fill so many different roles. Recently I've seen several classic "supports" such as Lion, Warlock, and even Vengeful Spirit mid, and do it well.

Compare that to a game like League of Legends where a champion really *is* stuck in their role. Literally in competitive play, you're probably never going to see a Soraka, Nami, Taric, etc. play any other role than the role they were designed for. The same goes for carries, top laners, AP mids, or junglers. Some of these champions MAY be able to fill 2 or 3 roles, but it's extremely rare. Even if they can fill multiple roles, they are typically only used in one, if they are used at all. Compare this to DotA where many different heroes are used in many different roles all the time, and it's hard for me to really understand the point you're trying to make. If anything, mechanics like AP just pigeonhole a champion even further because they're forced down a certain build path, where heroes like Invoker can build for physical damage, survivability, disables, escapes, magical damage, aoe, single target, or any combination of them all.

So I guess Valve is releasing their "Free-to-Play" documentary soon, which can currently be pre-loaded on Steam. I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #512 on: March 14, 2014, 08:57:03 pm »
As an example, Mirana can lane mid, top solo, bot solo, bot support, bot carry, makes a great trilaner, or heck, she can choose not to lane at all and simply roam around the map setting up ganks with her arrow. Windrunner is similar in this regard. Heroes like Tidehunter can be played mid, solo offlane, or support. In fact there are too many examples to list of heroes that can fill so many different roles. Recently I've seen several classic "supports" such as Lion, Warlock, and even Vengeful Spirit mid, and do it well.

Compare that to a game like League of Legends where a champion really *is* stuck in their role. Literally in competitive play, you're probably never going to see a Soraka, Nami, Taric, etc. play any other role than the role they were designed for. The same goes for carries, top laners, AP mids, or junglers. Some of these champions MAY be able to fill 2 or 3 roles, but it's extremely rare. Even if they can fill multiple roles, they are typically only used in one, if they are used at all. Compare this to DotA where many different heroes are used in many different roles all the time, and it's hard for me to really understand the point you're trying to make. If anything, mechanics like AP just pigeonhole a champion even further because they're forced down a certain build path, where heroes like Invoker can build for physical damage, survivability, disables, escapes, magical damage, aoe, single target, or any combination of them all.

So I guess Valve is releasing their "Free-to-Play" documentary soon, which can currently be pre-loaded on Steam. I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out.


It's funny, but my own experience has been the direct opposite of this.

With a game like LoL, I can typically think of lots of different ways to use the game mechanics to stick different characters into different roles/whatever.  Taking a carry and making them into a pure ability/spell based nuker, or a normally fragile support into a tankier sort with high health, using some of the same debuffs/whatever to aid in sheer defense by reducing their cooldowns (via items) and stuff like that.

It does of course depend on exactly which game you are playing as to how well this can be done.  LoL does it well enough in my opinion, though the other games (all of which use an AP system) do it a bit better.  Both Infinite Crisis and Dawngate seem to do this very well, a bit better than it works in LoL.   And of course Strife (which I still cant try yet arrrrgh) is looking to make certain to do this one from the ground up.  There are other games as well but these are the most notable.

Dota though... I generally see a given character in one or two extremely specific roles like support or ganker or whatever, and..... that's about it.  They dont really seem to do a whole lot else.


In the end though, for me, only so much of this even matters.  It's really the pacing that'll keep or lose my interest.  Dota can be fascinating.....well, pretty much ANYTHING in this genre can be, at least to me..... but the pacing is so very slow.  Laning in particular I really dont like in Dota (last hit just one creep at a time, slowly, over and over again.... so very many times.... ugh) and the support role that I usually like, it can be fun in that.... but then you have to ward, and THAT isnt much fun at all.  I'd rather be valiantly defending the carry either from enemies or from himself (yay, pub matches!) or something like that.   And there's no way I could do a carry role in Dota.   I can do it in the others.... but in Dota it tends to be THE slowest thing in the game.  The last-hit obsession goes into total overdrive mode with that, getting even worse with certain characters VS others.  I'd be asleep before I ever really got anywhere.


Ugh, there was more to say, but I aint been awake long and am still a bit not entirely here yet.

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #513 on: March 14, 2014, 10:56:37 pm »
HOMG, Blizzard's MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, must be coming closer to the release date because people are streaming it online.

I'm watching it being streamed by TB and some friends right now. Super excited!

http://www.twitch.tv/itmejp
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #514 on: March 15, 2014, 02:36:59 am »
Okay let me explain what I've observed so far with HotS:

1. Every hero has a "mount" built in, just like World of Warcraft. They can't be used in battle, but help you get from place to place around the map more quickly.

2. Gold has been completely removed from the game, it doesn't exist as a mechanic.

3. Experience is not a solo endeavor anymore, but is shared amongst the entire team. Your entire team levels in sequence once you have received enough experience individually to push the team over.

4. Items in the traditional sense have been completely removed from the game.

5. I don't think you level your skills, they kind of level themselves for you. Perhaps they all just get slightly better after each level.

6. You choose a 2 "summoner spells" from what I could tell, which last for the rest of the game. You unlock passive spells as well as the game progresses, whose effects seem to take the place of items.

7. All Mercenary Camps, in addition to giving your team experience, become "minions" for your team after you defeat them.

8. "Recall" or in this case "Hearthstone" is also an ability each person gets.

9. Towers themselves have a limited ammunition supply. There is no way to replenish this. Once a tower runs out of ammo, it can no longer defend itself.

10. Lanes are defended not only by towers, but also by "gates", which can only be passed through by allies until they are destroyed. This I guess prevents tower diving, or makes it much harder.

By far the coolest change though:

There are many different maps built into the game. Each map has a different set of objectives which keeps things fresh and encourages team strategy and confrontation.

Here are some examples: A map which has a "submap" built into it. The submap is a "mine" which kind of reminds me of a WoW dungeon. You go down into this mine when it opens (both teams can) and there are many mobs to fight and also a "main boss". Killing mobs or the boss drops these green skulls on the ground. There are 100 skulls in total. Once all the skulls are collected, a giant lane golem spawns for both sides, whose power is based on (for each team), the number of skulls collected. So the team that collected more skulls gets the stronger monster.

A map which has two "Shrines", one on each end. If one team can hold both shrines for long enough, it transforms one of their characters into this massive tanky beast of a hero that can chunk through enemies and buildings alike until he is killed. From what I observed, once the "ultra form" of the person is killed, their character still pops out with full health and mana.

A map with two gold chests on it which fill up with gold coins at set intervals. During these intervals, both teams meet at the chests and duke it out for the coins. Then a member from each team can pick up the coins and return it to their base. Once having done so, and reached a certain number of coins, a neutral set of pirate ships begins bombarding the enemy base from afar, killing towers and buildings with impunity for a short duration of time.

There's probably more, but yeah, I'm very impressed so far with what I've seen. There were a few design mechanics I wasn't too happy with, but in terms of a divergence from the typical MOBA formula, HotS seems to blow Strife clear out of the water. The pacing seems a bit slow, the "range" for the heroes is like abysmal (something I don't like at all, especially when you've got like Nova or Jim Raynor with freaking Sniper Rifles shooting 3 feet ahead of them), but overall it has massive potential.
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #515 on: March 15, 2014, 06:33:37 am »
I'll give them credit for "going out of the box" that is the MOBA genre. But personally I can't stand their art style. They've been hopelessly stuck in their "WoW" art-style forever and done nothing to improve it. :/ But oh well, might have some cool gameplay at least.


I'm just having a really hard time looking past the WoW-influences in its style. Might just be "old bittervet" speaking.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #516 on: March 15, 2014, 10:47:57 am »
I'll give them credit for "going out of the box" that is the MOBA genre. But personally I can't stand their art style. They've been hopelessly stuck in their "WoW" art-style forever and done nothing to improve it. :/ But oh well, might have some cool gameplay at least.


I'm just having a really hard time looking past the WoW-influences in its style. Might just be "old bittervet" speaking.
I too am not a huge fan of World of Warcraft, considering it the epitome of the "pay-to-grind" type gaming model. The game is so mindless that it makes their previous titles, such as Diablo 2, look intellectually taxing in comparison. To me it's the epitome of game design "mass appeal" in the same way the McDonald's is the mass appeal of food and Justin Bieber is the mass appeal of music. It never seems to turn out so well.

Having said that, the art style didn't seem to give me nightmares or remind me enough of WoW to push me away from the genre, but then again I never played WoW all that much either so meh. I'm just glad they didn't copy the LoL art style again.
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #517 on: March 16, 2014, 09:14:51 am »
As far as gameplay goes, I absolutely see this as an alternative for people who just cannot stomach the intense strategy and skill needed to play "real" MOBAs such as DotA2, LoL, Smite etc. Heck, even Smite is a "dumbed down" version of DotA2, so why not? If you can be more casual than DotA2, why not be more casual than Smite? There is always a player base that simply doesn't want to bother with the skillcap, hence why I play Smite. Therefore there must be people who don't want to bother with Smite and they can play HotS.


It just didn't interest me at all one bit. But that's more due to the traditional isometric MOBA-perspective control style than anything else. I just can't stand it.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #518 on: March 16, 2014, 01:38:53 pm »
As far as gameplay goes, I absolutely see this as an alternative for people who just cannot stomach the intense strategy and skill needed to play "real" MOBAs such as DotA2, LoL, Smite etc. Heck, even Smite is a "dumbed down" version of DotA2, so why not? If you can be more casual than DotA2, why not be more casual than Smite? There is always a player base that simply doesn't want to bother with the skillcap, hence why I play Smite. Therefore there must be people who don't want to bother with Smite and they can play HotS.


It just didn't interest me at all one bit. But that's more due to the traditional isometric MOBA-perspective control style than anything else. I just can't stand it.
Concerning the "dumbing down" of games:

In some ways, I agree with what you're saying. The mechanics of many MOBAs after DotA serve to reduce the complexity of the original game in order to make it easier for the casual player. However, in some cases, the changing or removal of mechanics does not make it "easier", but different.

Can you honestly say that Checkers is just a "dumbed down" version of Chess? It's indirectly true I suppose, they certainly have a lot in common. However Checkers has many different mechanics than Chess, and therefore also requires a different way of playing.

The same goes for DotA to LoL or LoL to Smite. I personally think that Smite is a more complex version of League of Legends (due to the addition of new buffs, more choices, and of course a 3rd dimension), but it's also true that Smite is slightly different than League as well.

In the same way, Heroes of the Storm may have less complexity than LoL, but I'm not sure it necessarily makes it any less skill-based. Complexity can be a bad thing when it is unnecessary or simply a burden to the player. Removing gold and items from the game doesn't necessarily make it less skill-based if those gaps are filled with new options in strategy and battle. In addition, the dynamic "map events" add a whole new mechanic to the game that isn't even present in the other classical MOBA maps.

At this point, I believe it's too early to tell how "skill-based" HotS will be compared to the other MOBAs. If they can achieve a higher skill cap with a lower complexity, I'd be very impressed.

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Offline Cyborg

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #519 on: March 16, 2014, 02:02:04 pm »
As far as gameplay goes, I absolutely see this as an alternative for people who just cannot stomach the intense strategy and skill needed to play "real" MOBAs


I haven't heard one person talk about the intense strategy and skill needed.  :D


Being a team game, a lot of the individual skill lies behind 20% of the total skill contribution possible.
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #520 on: March 16, 2014, 02:58:34 pm »
As far as gameplay goes, I absolutely see this as an alternative for people who just cannot stomach the intense strategy and skill needed to play "real" MOBAs


I haven't heard one person talk about the intense strategy and skill needed.  :D


Being a team game, a lot of the individual skill lies behind 20% of the total skill contribution possible.
I was more referring to the "team based coordination"-skill here though ;)
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #521 on: March 20, 2014, 12:57:24 am »
Just got finished watching Valve's free documentary, Free to Play. Overall I was really impressed. It shows the evolving world of E-Sports in the U.S. and abroad. It showcases some of the sacrifices these players have to make in order to simply get a chance at being the best. It also portrays the growing popularity of MOBAs on the world stage, though this one focuses specifically on DotA. It's pretty interesting if you're into this kind of thing.
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Offline Cyborg

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #522 on: March 30, 2014, 12:38:42 pm »
I'm checking in with this thread just to let you know that the Team Builder league of legends feature is live, and it's awesome. I haven't had one single game turn into an argument or temper tantrum about which lane and who is doing what. It's been the most pleasant experience I've ever had playing this game.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #523 on: March 31, 2014, 08:21:20 am »
I'm checking in with this thread just to let you know that the Team Builder league of legends feature is live, and it's awesome. I haven't had one single game turn into an argument or temper tantrum about which lane and who is doing what. It's been the most pleasant experience I've ever had playing this game.


....about bloody time!   I hadnt even heard of such a thing until you just now mentioned it.... I tend not to be very good at following current news for things.... but that's exactly the sort of thing I'd wanted to see in this.   I haaaaaaaaaaate role/position arguements in any of these games.

Now if only the others would do this.

Offline Misery

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #524 on: April 08, 2014, 09:10:42 am »
Finally I have gotten a beta key for Strife.  Using the same name there as I am here.

I shall be trying it out later today, methinks.  Been looking forward to this one. 


I also have four additional keys if anyone should want one.  Nobody I know would be interested in this genre, so I dont need the extras.

 

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