Caltrops - Defense of the Ancients - The current state of MOBAs

Forum Overview :: Defense of the Ancients

by fabio 06/18/2016, 4:41pm PDT

League of Legends

This was my first and favorite for a good 3 years. Sadly it got worse as they updated it. Each balance attempt was edging each hero towards the center of mediocrity, the charm of the low end graphics was replaced with bland hi res crap (updating the look could have worked if they didn't go with the muddy "trying to be DoTA2 too" look), and the simplicity was worn away with the introduction of tons of new items that required a paragraph of reading and a calculator to understand (Weapon does 1% of your current health + 2% of enemy's missing health per hit, activating converts 5% of target's damage taken in the last 6 seconds + 25% of your remaining mana into a shield which lasts 3 seconds or until target is healed for 40% of their max health whichever comes first (max shield against monsters: 300)).

What really killed it though was the evolution of the player base. It went from the fun casual alternative to DotA and became an even worse community. The total rigidness of lane roles (which doesn't even matter outside the top 5% of players) making every game feel the same was the final nail in the coffin.

I blame the move to E-SPORTS SERIOUS BUSINESS. As soon as they introduced ranked seasons, the Twitch community took off and suddenly everyone became an armchair quarterback overnight going on about THE META. Everyone shit their pants every game for not following THE META right from the pre-game screen. People who couldn't even figure out to ward the river were spazzing out lecturing you on "tiers" and "comp".

Current favorite: "that guy" who always bitches that the team needs a tank but never picks one himself because HE has to be the superstar mid.

Awesomenauts

This was the saddest decline of the bunch. Started out an absolute blast. Simple, colorful, easy to pick up, fun, action reflex based, best community, short matches to minimize frustration.

Holy shit did they fuck it up. Starting with the expansion, it all started going to shit. Massively overpowered DLC heroes, tweaking the absolute worst map to make it even worse (AI Station should have just been flat out removed from the game), and features to make the games shorter for the sake of more watchable E-SPORTS matches. All this did was exasperate the genre's snowballing problem. Matches were pretty much decided by first blood. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say 9 out of 10 games were steamrolled by whichever team got the first kill.

Another favorite ruined as soon as the developer tried to legitimize it as a competitive e-sport.

DotA 2

This one started out as my least favorite but for a while became the only one I played. Mostly by virtue of the competition all turning to shit. By far the steepest learning curve, but once you figure it out there's a satisfaction to the insane plays you can make with each hero's crazy over the top abilities that were refreshing after so many years of LoL's "nerf to sameness" philosophy.

It still doesn't excuse all the overly complex features and an interface that refuses to stop being a Warcraft 3 mod thanks to die hard purists.

Smite

I tried to get into this, but aside from the over the shoulder 3rd person perspective this game brings absolutely nothing new to the table. I think the perspective actually makes it a worse. You couldn't see behind you, ranged heroes seemed to be at a significant disadvantage to bunny hopping, and it seemed like half the ults in the game were "jump a mile into the air then aim at a tiny dot in the distance to swoop down" which was extremely easy to miss before getting hit with the 3 minute cooldown.

Heroes of the Storm

I was into this one for a while. Stripped away a lot of the unnecessary crap like gold & items (shopping for items always seemed like pointless busywork since loadouts were 90% the same every game). Shorter games, greater emphasis on teamfights, forced by interesting pop up objectives, no traditional "carry" role so everyone was viable at every stage of the game.

Unfortunately the tutorial was terrible and everyone kept playing it like a traditional DotA, refusing to stop laning all game thinking they were going to farm into a late carry and never showing up to the objective team fights. This amplified the traditional genre weakness of one bad player disproportionately dragging down your team. In LoL and DotA, one player being absent for team fights at least meant your team was getting more farm. In HotS all it meant you were down by 1 body (in a game where everyone scales at the same rate) and got wiped. Even more than 2 years later there's always "that guy" on the team who decides to split push by himself all game. They should seriously have a separate loss rate stat for games with a Gazlowe or Abathur on your team because I swear to god over 2/3rds of everyone's losses was when that was the case.

HotS also has the amazing distinction of the performance becoming worse as it went on. The freaking beta ran ten times smoother than it does now.

Battleborn

Haven't played it, but it's by Gearbox and the Borderlands people so I don't have to. From what I hear it pulled a Titanfall and the multiplayer is already dead.

Overwatch

"It's not a MOBA because there are no minions or towers oHUGLAHUGLAHUGLA"

Fuck you, this is a MOBA that just stripped out all the crap until you were left with a more focused and interesting TF2. The current best the genre has to offer. Only downsides are a couple maps (fuck you, Temple of Anubis and 2nd Hanamura point) and the presence of "that guy" who bitches that the team doesn't have a certain role, but refuses to switch to that role himself despite being able to switch at any time during a match. "FUCK YOU I'M THE ROCKSTAR DPS CARRY!!!"

Oh yeah, the unlock system is insultingly terrible. Almost as bad as TF2's.

Prediction: they will eventually ruin it with a 2fort capture the flag stalemate mode that will become the most popular and take over all games. Either that or they go the TF2 route and slowly turn it into a clusterfuck MMO.