Hello everyone, how are you ?

So i decided to write this quick guide to MOBAs. What motivated me was the amazing recent numbers of the different games on the market. The International 4, a Dota 2 competition that took place in Seattle this summer had a 10 Millions dollar prize pool, which means a lot for eSport but also for the gaming industry.

If you would have told me these numbers 20 years ago, when eSport wasn't even a real thing... That people around the world would watch these games, cheers for their favorite teams, spend hundreds of dollars on plane tickets and hotels, just to see ancients falls, i would have hardly believe that.

Yet, here we are now.

People from all nationality wanting to see people play videogames

So i am going to do an introduction to these games, then talk about them separately, talking about their mechanics and individual strength and gameplay because none of them are the same.
I don't want to see any " LoL is a copy of Dota " or "Trash bronze player, l2p".

Let's go then.

MOBA introduction

MOBA stands for "Multiplayer Online Battle Arena", and yeah, you can already feel puzzled... What is the difference between a MOBA and an online match of Call of duty ? They are both played in a confined environment and the player are separated into multiple team, fighting for domination.

Many people generally see MOBA as an action RPG/RTS game, but then again, there are so many different games that don't fit into this category such as games like World of Tanks. I think it is pointless to try to narrow them down to a specific name/genre since in the end, there is only one key factor : PvP.

I think that almost any competitive team game can be called MOBA in one way or another, so i won't really dwell on this subject but feel free to express your point of view.
Now i will talk specifically about certain MOBAs, but only because i know them more and theirs mechanics are often tweaked and used in others MOBAs. 

MOBA's often involve 2 teams of 5 players each. The two teams must confront each other in order to destroy the main building in the base of the opponents, it is an objective based game.
Each player will play a very strong protagonist of their choosing, a god, a champion,a  hero... These characters will become stronger and stronger throughout the game by acquiring experience and earning gold from killing enemies, allowing them to buy items that give them passive and active bonuses/abilities.

To help them take down the enemy base, there are weaker units called creeps or minions, that periodically spawn and move along one of several tracks linking the 2 bases together to maul every enemies they encounter (but most of the time they just get slaughtered by you) and help your destroy the towers that protects the base.

 Here is an example map taken from Dota 2

So these are the basics stuffs that is common to most of them. 
Let's now look at 3 of them and discuss gameplay mechanics and Game design choices:
Dota 2, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm.

Dota 2

Dota 2 is the sequel of the "first" MOBA, Dota : Defense Of The Ancients, a mod of Warcraft III. 
It was released in 2013 after many years of beta. Many people see Dota as the truest MOBA because it was the first one of the genre (which is a misconception), i myself consider it as the one that democratized it to everyone.

A typical Dota 2 team fight, people are doing stuff and you are trying to locate your hero

Dota 2 was made 10 years after his predecessor and yet, it shouldn't be look at as a sequel. It took everything from Dota 1, gave it a new look, had his own client since before you had to play it with warcraft 3 as a mod and that is about it.

The game is almost exactly the same, and Dota is still updated till this day, both having the same balance or content. So Dota 2 is more the stand alone version of Dota , an upgraded version 10 years later :p

The current game creator/manager is Icefrog, a mysterious designer who is said to be the one deciding everything design-related since Dota. One of the key condition of making Dota 2 was that the game was to be similar, which meant that everything that was done before in warcraft 3 was to be done the same way.

Why am i telling you this ? Well because Dota was a mod, many things were limited by the Warcraft 3 engine, such as spell or items mechanics. For example, damages occurrence below 15 damages won't trigger certain spells/abilities since the engine doesn't detect it as an attack. This is just one of the many implication that was present in the warcraft 3 engine that would force some design decisions.

Picture from the first Dota

It is really important for a designer to know how your game engine works, since you will have to adapt to it.  

A perfect Imbalance 

Dota 2 is regarded as a fantastic game by many due to his incredible lifespan, how many games on the market have been there for 10 years and still have a player database over 10 millions active users ?

This is mainly because of what i call " A perfect imbalance". Competitive games that are updated have what we call a Metagame, a specific way of playing the game that varies with balance changes or players discovering new elements/combinations in the game.

This perfect imbalance in Dota 2 is expressed by having certain heroes or strategies that are privileged for a period of time, and it will shift to another one in the next patch, depending on the new balance changes.

Simple chart showing the popularity of certain heroes

Currently, the main strategy (the one that won the international) is to pick heroes that will create a deathball around 10 min and to push relentlessly the base, making game last only 25 min top. Yes, it is a bit boring ...But everything will change in the next weeks, depending on what Icefrog decide, the game will feel new, which is fantastic for a player. Players are always learning and adapting.

It is a very interesting approach on how to make a game last longer without having to allocate many resources to it, no dlc, no Dota 3 yet, just changing little bit of the gameplay and you are good to go.

It also can be weird since the whole game is supported by Icefrog shoulders, his will are our commands which means if he doesn't want to change something for some reasons, it won't.

Level Cap and Community

One thing that is really important when creating a competitive game is the different steps the player will find himself into. Dota 2 or LoL or even Street fighter are very different for a beginner and for an experienced veteran.

Nothing will prevent that, the more you dive into a game, the more you will be able to see the small nuances that are possible. And this is the also the key to create a good game : Having a gameplay that is deep enough but yet can be understood by a beginner. Else no one would play the game...

For example, there are heroes that can turn invisible in Dota 2, which new player finds OP (Overpowered). Imagine, you are alone on the map, minding your own business... and then a HUGE spider/beetle attack you out of nowhere and kill you like that ! 
It is frustrating since you don't know what you can do to prevent that. But there is always a way : Don't wander by yourself, use anti invisible items, stick to the tower or even be the one to hunt them down.

And when you will do that, you will start to realize that they not overpowered at all, just learn how to play against them. Everyone has a weakness (mine is M&M's) !
This depth is also very important because when you will balance the game, you can't make multiple instance of your game. you can't make a balance patch for noobs, and one for high level players.

Discussion on Reddit/Dota2 about the strongest heroes

But you still have to find a way to balance it for everyone, try to keep all the players happy. This means you have to listen to what the community considers broken but you also need to know what is clearly broken. If you nerf (diminishing the potential) the invisible heroes to satisfy the beginners, they won't be viable for the high level players.

You have to find the perfect balance.

Positive / negatives feedback

Now that i have introduced the main things in Dota 2 and MOBA , let's jump into the gameplay's decisions that make the game what it is. What is really important when creating a game where people are fighting each other are the positive and the negative feedbacks.

For those who don't know, a positive feedback is a tool to reinforce a leading position while a negative feedback is a tool to keep the game close. For example, in Street fighter 4, the revenge meter is a negative feedback. When the player lose half of his health, he can unleash a devastating attack.
And the super meter on the other hand is a positive feedback, when performing a special move or damaging the opponent, the player will gain a special meter that will give him stronger special attacks.

Everyone is set now ?

Killing an opponent and Killing Spree

Ok, we will start slowly by looking at what happens when a hero kills another one. 2 things :
1 - The hero that killed the other will get a bounty of gold and experience for his trouble
2 - The hero that died will lose gold and won't be able to do anything until he is revived after a timer.

So i guess swords are stronger than words...

So Let's analyze this ! First, positive feedback all the way. The dead is heavily punished, he will be farther away from getting an item than before his death, meaning he will be weaker compared to others. And the killer gets stronger, allowing him to kill his next target more easily.
We can see that these feedbacks promotes killings, it not only make you stronger but slow the opponents down. Thank god killing is promoted in Dota 2 because it is not fun to just watch enemies farms....

Another thing that happens when killing an opponent is that the killer will start a Killing Spree. When reaching 5 kills in a row without dying, he will give bonus gold to the enemy that finally manages to kill him.Just to make you realize, when killing someone you get around 225 gold, which means when you have killed 10 people in a row, you will have 2500 gold gained from killing. The hero that manages to kill you will get a 1000 gold bonus, it may not seems much but it is.

This is a negative feedback, and it makes comeback available because giving 1000 gold to the enemy carry really sucks.... GG feeders, l2p, 1vs1 mid anytime !

Barracks & Mega creeps

Let's now look at why Dota 2 is an objective based game. When pushing the base, the heroes will have the opportunity to destroy the ranged and melee barracks that are located at the beginning of each lanes. By destroying them, it will give a steroids boost to your own creeps on the lane where they were standings. Don't bother trying to find the logic here.

Why do evil creatures must always live in crappy place ?

What it does is that it makes harder for the enemy team to fight the creep waves, while also reducing the amount of gold available for each lane. A Super creep gives only half the bounty of the normal creep and there is even a stronger version of them that spawns when all of the barracks are destroyed.

It is a positive feedback, and a big one ! Team usually don't hesitate to sacrifice themselves if it means taking down the barracks. This gameplay decision makes the barracks one the main objective of the game, an experienced player knows that when you lose multiple set of racks (short for barracks) and if they didn't have an important advantage before, they won't be able to come back. It is also an excuse for creating heroes that are specialized into taking down buildings, instead of heroes.

Don't hesitate to add more complexity to your gameplay if it means giving you more space or freedom to create others gameplay orientation.

Roshan

"Look at me ! i have a sword in my leg and i don't care !" - Roshan

Who is this nasty beast hiding in a pit, just minding his own business and eating cheese ? That is Roshan the cursed one. Roshan is a sub-boss located in the middle of the map that will drop in the ground a powerful item when slain, the aegis. This item will resurrect the heroes that carry him when this one is killed and it will disappear after that.

Cool, no ? Roshan is (arguably) pretty powerful and the teams will often have to commit several heroes in order to kill him, but there is a trick. Roshan will respawn randomly between 8 and 11 minutes after having been killed, taking back the aegis if this one wasn't used.

There are 2 ways to look at Roshan :
- It is a positive feedback, it helps the team give a security to one of their heroes. Give the aegis to your carry and he can go full retard on the enemy team without fearing to die.
- it is a negative feedback, it will give a way to fight the enemy team since one of your hero has 2 lives.

But there are even more ways to look at it, what about this weird timer ?
- It is a negative feedback  since the team can't predict when Rosh (short for Roshan) will spawn. Can your team really afford to stay near the pit for 3 full minutes ? The answer is often NO, there too many things to do elsewhere. Is an aegis worth letting the enemy team do what they want for 3 minutes ? Farming, taking towers ?

Roshan really adds depth to the game and is in 95% of the high level match the key to victory or defeat. I could detail Roshan much more since there are ways to watch over him, and even get to him unnoticed but i think i would have to detail every single thing in Dota 2... 

Buyback

Last but not least, and i think if there are LoL player reading this, you will scream "OOOPPPP".
When your hero is dead, you have the option of instantly respawning by buying your life back. It cost a lot of money that depends on your hero level and the current time of the match.

Here is the formula :100 + (Level^2)×1.5 + (GameTimeInMinutes×15)

Of course, there are many drawbacks. First, you sacrifice a lot of gold for it, it usually means your next item will be delayed by a lot. Secondly, it adds 25 % of your death timer to your next death, death timer varies accordingly to your hero level from 5 s to 100 s. You might think " Why do i care, i will just buyback again !", but you can't... At least not before 6 minutes after your previous buyback. 

Quick tip: Try to level up your skills, maybe you won't die then....

And finally, it makes impossible to gain gold by killing creeps for the rest of your death timer. At level 25, you will need to wait 100 s before gaining gold from creeps, which means you can't instantly farm back the gold you spent.

So, what do you think of the buyback regarding positive or negative feedbacks ? Again, both. If you don't obtain something from buying back, such as wiping the enemy team or taking down Roshan, you just spent a lot of gold.

This is, I think, one of the most important decision of Dota 2 when playing at high level. It is a huge bet because dying again would mean being out of the game for at least 125 s and not being able to play for 2 minutes is a lot. So, are you a gambler ?


I think most of Dota 2 has been covered, and before i move on to LoL, i would like to precise that i didn't talk about everything and maybe i simplified a lot of the things since most of them are complicated. Sorry about that, but i can't just talk about Dota 2.

Moving on !

League of Legends

League of Legends is the first MOBA that managed to have a huge success (because Demigod didn't...). It was released in October 2009 and is one the most played game in the world, you can see LoL (i am not being funny, just refer it as LoL) almost everywhere on the internet. It is the first 
game played on twitch 95 % of the time, there are ads everywhere and LoL even has it own clones such as 300 Heroes.

Two champions farmings Minions in League of Legends

One of the biggest accomplishment of LoL that nobody can ever take away is the fact that it is still the most played game in the world, not bad i guess. The last estimation of player were around 67 millions monthly active player and 27 millions daily active, which is almost the population of France.
And no one can deny that success.

LoL's gameplay is very close to Dota, that's why many people when the game was released were being angry, calling LoL a Dota rip-off. Of course, it was the same people that were screaming that Heath Ledger would be a terrible joker... Anyways !

In LoL, 2 teams of 5 players will fight to destroy the nexus located in the enemy base, protected by towers. Creeps are called minions, Heroes are champions, barracks are Inhibitor (which makes a lot more sense) and every female champions will probably have a bikini/nurse/teacher/dominatrix/kitty skins :)

Skins available for Katarina the Sinister blade, Fiora the Grand duelist and Janna the Storm's fury

Before talking about the gameplay differences, it is worth talking about the economic model. In LoL, the player won't have all of the champions available from the start, each week there is a pool of free champions that will change. Of course, the player can "buy" any champions he wants using either real money or points obtained by playing matches.

You can already see that this decision really has an implication, i know i will compare it to Dota 2 a lot in the next lines but i think it is very important to see how a game can be different from another with just small changes.

So what are the implication : 
1 - Beginner will have a more restricted hero pool to familiarize with first, it is easier to understand one champions if you meet him during the first 20 games you play.
2 - In higher level, if someone plays a champion that is not in the champions pool, you can assume that he bought it and have many games with him. You know he can play it then.
 3- Some matchups will be very unfavorable to one player. For example, is someone picks a champion that directly counters the one in the hero pool. if you are forced to pick Vlad and the opponent picks Fizz, you lost !
4- Money for Riot !

MOBA V2.0

League of Legends is what i call a MOBA V2.0, compared to for example Dota or Demigod. It was the first MOBA released, so it managed to attract a lot of the player that liked MOBA but found it bothersome to use other games limitations. It felt like a true stand alone game, not a mod. So i think it was a very nice move by Riot to launch a MOBA when everyone wanted one and there was no competitor. A lot of the first players to play LoL were people that had previously played Dota, that were familiar with the mechanics.

Secondly, just by design, LoL was also very clever. If you look closely at the Masteries or even just at the concept of certain champions that have a rage bar instead of mana, doesn't it remind you of something else ? World of Warcraft maybe ?
 In 2008, 6 years ago, what were the games  that were the most successful, the MMORPGs. There were games such as WOW, Age of Conan, City of heroes... These were the game that had the biggest player population at the time.

Masteries 'trees, each point will grant a passive boost to one stat

So why is it relevant ? Let's be clear : I am in no way accusing Riot of anything. Game design and ideas are created with inspiration, every games is taking little bits of gameplay to another. Do you think the one game that first introduced potion should complain that now there are potions everywhere ? The only time i would complain is when a game is a plain copy of another, just reskinned for example, but taking some mechanics is not copying.

I think Riot's designer wanted to add some gameplay that the players that hadn't played Dota would be familiar with, to ease the transition. So they added Masteries, witch is exactly like any talents '  tree in many MMORPG. And they created some champions that players will instinctively know how to play due to the resemblance. You have a warrior that build up rage, then you know you can't go into a fight directly, you need to use so abilities before you can use your more powerful ones.

It is a very important lesson according to me, a designer can easily add mechanics from another type of game to his game in order to give the players a feeling of familiarity. If a strategy game use the argument " You like darks souls ? Well our game is a lot like that but with a RTS gameplay." then people might want to try it just because it remind them of another game they liked.

Soloplays

Now let's dive into what makes LoL the game people like when looking at the gameplay. The most important thing you need to know when playing LoL is the skills differentiation with Dota 2 . Where Dota 2 challenges players on the coordination between players, LoL emphasize on the execution. Again, not saying LoL doesn't have team coordination...

Many of the skills/spells in LoL are skillshots, you do not just press "R" and people die immediately. You have to aim with your mouse where you want the projectile to go and so guess how the opponents will react and try to dodge it. Most of the time, skills are way harder to land than in Dota 2. But it doesn't stop here !

Example of skillshot, hitting the enemy only inside the cone

Riot designers want action, they don't want a static game where champions would say" F***k, ulti used. Let's wait 300 s before doing something now." The cooldowns and mana/rage/agility/... regen are wonderful to spam your spells,  which promotes aggression and plays. For example, Annie has a 4,8s and 10 s cooldown on her spells without items or masteries and if a team fight lasts around 20 s, she can go ham on the others champions. And even when you look at certain spells, they have some specificities such as reducing the cooldown is the target is killed by the spell ! 

The cooldowns are not the only wonderful things in LoL, the moveset of the champions are also wonderful. To create a champion/hero that is interesting, you need to be able to differentiate him from the others, not only cosmetics-wise but also regarding his utility he brings to the game. You need to think about something that makes him unique. Do you want to create a high mobility nuker ? Give him 2 damages spells and one mobility spells (dash/blink). Do you want a lurking assassin ? Give him an invisibility spells and others abilities to create chaos. They need to have weaknesses and strength.

However, there is a trend in LoL regarding new champions that has been here for a while, it is to give to most of the champions every tools. Champions must have a mobility/initiation spells, they must have a cc spell (crowd control) and some others stuffs. Just look at the latest champions, GNAR.
I personally am not a huge fan of that and I will say "When everyone is OP, no one is ! "

I will express myself more on this subject in the next chapter but before that, just remember that :
low cooldown + incredible moveset + skill shots = aggression !
One good player can easily make the difference in a fight and it is a good thing, it gives the player a feeling of empowerment. He knows he can make the difference by landing his skillshots. Of course, there many others variables, panic, coordination with the team but in the end, LoL offers much more possibility to a solo player than Dota 2 does.

Passive versus actives ?

So why don't i like the fact that every champions have every tools ? 

First, it is because the longer the game is updated, the less differences there will be between champions. The whole community doesn't necessarily wants a new champion every week, they want balance, rework, fixes, a new client... The problem of having too many champions is the more champions there will be, the harder it will become to balance them all to make them all viable. And if you have 60 champions who all have a cc and a mobility spells, why look at the weaker ones that can't do that ?

If you watch the pro scene, you know what i am talking about. During the LCS in january, there were only 47 champions that were picked in a 117 pool, that is even less than 50%. Of course, there are many reasons. The metagame might not favor the unpicked champions or they might just have been forgotten, maybe it is just the players that don't like them. A quick comparison to Dota 2 where only 10 heroes weren't picked in the last event in a 108 hero pool. But of course, Dota 2 is older, they had 10 years to balance heroes and make them all viable.

The problem comes from something i said earlier, heroes/champions need to have strength and weaknesses that are unique to them. They must excel in a specific part of the game, and not be average, they all have a unique role. You can see a difference between Dota 2 and LoL just by looking at the philosophy of hero/champions creation: On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 = OP), most of the Dota 2 heroes are either an 8 or a 9 whereas LoL's are only 5 and 6. 

But why are Dota 2 heroes so OP ? Is it just numbers with the manacost, the cooldowns, the damages ? Well maybe a little, a 5 seconds AOE stun is great :)
But it mostly come from the items the heroes can buy. In Dota 2 , 80 % of the items have an active ability: Heal,Damages,Control,Tankiness,Mobility... You name it, Dota 2 has it. Dota 2 items are built because of their active abilities instead of their passives ones.

It means that you will build items that will give you mechanics that your hero lack, initiation, escape,damages... And it will give you a whole different hero that can crush others in some situations. Of course, LoL has the summoner spells and many a very helpful, Flash is a fantastic ability. But Each player can only get 2... It reduces the possibility of different build you can create in LoL. For LoL players, imagine if you could have 4 summoner spells instead of 2. I bet you would see more champions become viable.

I wonder why Riot chose that because when you look at it, there were even fewer active items before. Maybe they thought it was too complicated to have 4 skills + 6 actives items for the players. But i thinks it is stupid to think that way as a designer. Players will be as bad as you authorize them to be and as good as you push them to be. And i bet Riot's designer realize that too now, because we see more and more active items being created or reworked.

Secondly, many people thinks that Riot are deliberately creating new OP champions to sell them. Remember that LoL earns money by allowing players to "buy" champions, so what is the best way to earn money that way ? Creating new champions that are stronger that the current one, that high skilled player need to buy if they want to win. Of course, it is simplistic to think that only new champions will be played. A good player can be very powerful with a champion he knows well.  

Despite all i said, i want to clarify something. I am in no way saying LoL is inferior, i just wanted to highlight the difference and their reasons.

Positive feedbacks and negatives ones

Moving on to the feedbacks, i love that part.

Nashor and Drake

We will directly start with the biggest one, that just like in Dota 2 are both positive and negative depending on how you look at them.

The Baron Nashor (Roshan backwards ) is the strongest neutral monster on the Summoner's rift, he 's located in the north east of the river separating the two sides. Killing Nashor will grant both gold and experience to the team dealing the final blow and will also give a powerful buff to the whole team, boosting the magic and attack power and granting bonus mana and life regeneration.

"Hey guys, did you see the signs ? I made them myself ! " - Baron Nashor 

Unlike Dota2 with Roshan being weak(?), Nashor is really regarded as a Raid boss due to his powerful abilities and stats. Almost no champions can kill him solo and just like in Dota 2, your team is very exposed when doing it so time your moment well. However, contrary to Dota 2, Nashor will respawn exactly 7 min after his death and will only spawn 15 min into the game which means you don't have some sneaky strategy of Lvl 1 nash.

With all that said, it seems that Nashor is both a positive feedback and a negative one. It helps the team that kills him but the timer of the respawn is fixed. Why ? To promote fight around the Nashor 's pit. It might not be the most important objective, but having the buff when pushing the base is critical if every champions is alive. Team might even try to get a pick off 30 s before the respawn, just so they can do it uncontested.

The Drake or Dragon on the other hand is considered as a trash mob. He is located symmetrically at the opposite of Nashor, in the South west of the river. Killing him will grant gold and experience to the whole team... But there is a trick. If your team is behind in experience of the opposite team, you will gain an experience bonus, and if your champion is below the Drake level (because he gains levels too, if you can, why couldn't he ? ), you will gain an other experience bonus...

What is a fire breathing dragon doing in a water river ?

You can easily see that although it is both a negative/positive feedback just like the Nashor, it has a stronger negative feedback potency. Of course, that is just the theory because in the game people tend to kill him every time they can...As soon as he spawns, he usually dies within the next 30 s... And contrary to Nashor, many champions can solo kill him at low level.
 

Death bounty

Another good thing to look at is how Riot choose to deal with the kills and deaths. Killing an enemy champion will give gold as well as experience, pretty classic i'd say. But the enemy that dies won't lose any gold, he's just dead and can't d anything for the duration of his death timer. It means that you can't really prevent someone from getting items, you are just delaying it. It also means that if you don't get anything out of the kill itself, such as destroying a tower or slaying the (not so) mighty drake, you won't have an advantage.

But that is not all ! When a champion dies, respawn and dies again by the same enemy champion, his gold bounty will be smaller. The 9th death in a row of champion only gives 50 golds to the enemy, as much as 2-3 minions. This makes feeding harder and harder both in regular games or with an abusive player. Of course, the bounty reset when the champion kill an enemy champion or gradually comes back to the normal value when performing an assist (helping to kill someone but not getting the final blow).

And finally, much like in Dota 2, a champion that kills several champions in a row will give higher gold bounty up to 500 gold (300 at the start). Let's now look at each one.

Not loosing gold : It is a negative feedback. There is no big punishment for dying, more like a reward for killing. It is not as much as frustrating  as Dota 2 when you have a harder time recovering from your last death.

Smaller bounty: Negative feedback again. It makes harder to snowball and force the player to target another champion than the one he previously killed ( in theory).

Killing spree higher bounty : Negative feedback again. Not going to dwell on this one. 

These feedbacks are according to me what really differentiate LoL from Dota 2. LoL won't punish you as hard as Dota 2 when dying. Of course, LoL has many mechanics that makes killing easier sometimes with the moveset, the summoner spells, the AD (Attack damage) and AP ( Attack Power) that scales more so it is only fair to not punish as much.

Super Minions

Let's now look at the Super Minions which i really don't find scary since when i think of minions, i think about Despicable me... Inside the base is located 3 inhibitors which function the same as barracks in Dota 2. When a team destroy one, the minions inside that lane will get a stats boost and a stronger minion, the Super Minion will spawn and move with his buddies to annihilate the base.
But again, there is a trick ( there is always a trick). The inhibitor will "respawn" 4 minutes after his destruction, removing then the buff and preventing again the spawn of Super Minion.

Left side : Melee Minion. Middle : Super Minion. Right side: Ranged Minion

This time, why don't you tell me what this does and what kind of feedback it is ? Come on, it is not that hard.

Ok, i will say it. Destroying inhibitor is a positive feedback since it makes harder for the enemy team to push because they have to deal with the Super minions. The respawn thing on the other hand is a negative feedback, if your team is good and the enemy doesn't have already an unsurmountable lead, you can hold your grounds for 4 min, hoping they don't get the Nashor while you fight the Supers.



OK, so i think i am good with LoL. I skipped a lot of thing, and i apologize if some concepts weren't as explained as you wished. So now, let's look a our last MOBA.

Heroes of the Storm

The last MOBA (or Action RTS) i will talk about is the upcoming game by Blizzard entertainment, Heroes of the Storm. As i am writing this article, Heroes of the Storm is not yet released and is only in available closed beta so there are probably mechanics that will be different compared to the released version.

Illidan and Nova fighting Arthas in Heroes of the Storm 

While i am talking about Blizzard, i think it is important to talk about the "battle" between Blizzard and Valve concerning Dota 2. Since Dota was a mod of Warcraft III, there were many discussions about who had the right on it, was it the modder ? the company releasing the engine ?
It was very interesting to see all the legal discussions and battle between the 2 companies,and i think was important regarding the future of gaming since modding won't disappear...

I can't really sum up everything that happened and was said so you should go check on the magical internet. A good article to start is this one : http://kotaku.com/5909703/blizzard-and-valve-stop-fighting-make-peace-over-Dota-dispute

Now back to our topic. Heroes of the storm is again a 5 vs 5 game where each team has to battle the opponents to destroy the enemy palace. One of the main feature of Heroes of Storm (besides the fact that Blizzard is developing it and these guys know how to make nice game) is that all of the Blizzard Universes are combined. The heroes/champions roster is composed of celebrities and monster of Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft so be ready to fight Illidan with your Diablo III demon hunter.

What an incredible selling argument (that reminds me a lot of the one of Super smash brother) ! Of course, many can argue that the younger gamers don't really know who was Guld'an in Warcraft II but who really cares... I personally didn't know the Ice climbers before playing Smash Melee.
And it is a really powerful argument regarding the roster since the charisma of the heroes the player will incarnate is very important to enjoy a game.

Newcomer and Blizzard legacy mecanics

Heroes of the Storm was announced during the 2010 Blizzcon, and many people knew before that Blizzard was thinking about creating their own MOBA when they started looking at Dota's copyright. But not only did they chose to use their universe, they didn't succumbed to just making another clone of one already released MOBA.

Like i said previously, Heroes of the storm use the base of Action RTS by opposing 2 teams and controlling a hero that will evolve and become more powerful. But it is just what they took, the rest really feels different. A key feature to Heroes of the storm is that there are multiple maps, but that keeps the same gameplay of destroying the palace. And to add to that, each maps got a unique feature: In one of them, the player will be able to transform one of their teammate sinto a powerful dragon warrior, in another one, you can collect doubloons to pay a pirate to bombard the opponents.
Although i am not really sure if all of these maps are balances, it creates sub- gameplay that change from the classic "KILL THE ENEMY" and focus more the game on objective gaming.

There are currently 5 maps available to play, each having different sub-objectives

Secondly, Blizzard 's designers chose to remove the gold from the resource the player can gain. The only resource is experience, which means also no last hitting the minions/creeps. Ok, that is interesting i guess... We will talk about all the implication later.

"But then, how do you buy items ?" You don't. No item here...

"What about summoner spells or other active ability ?" No again, at least not yet.

"Man... It seems it is a dumb down version" people might say to which i say Give them a chance.

If some features are removed or streamlined, Blizzard added many other things. For example, instead of leveling up your character and choosing your next skills, you pick Talents. These are modification to your skills, giving them more damages or a new mechanics such as giving you a new sub ability much like the rune mechanics of Diablo III. This offers many specialization to the heroes, that replaces the items. You have to decide how your character will be oriented, more pushing, more dps or more crowd control ?
Again, the game being still in beta, some talents builds are stronger than others but you can't expect a game to be balanced so rapidly.

The neutral monsters are also very different in Heroes of the storm, since there is no gold to gain from killing unit. When defeating neutral monsters, they will come to your aid on the battlefield, joining your creeps and marching towards the enemy palace.

Finally, there are some mechanics that were introduced in Diablo 3. Each minions waves will drop one regen orb on the ground, much like the health orbs in Diablo 3 that were introduced to remove the potion abuse of the previous game. This means that player can be more aggressive and spend their mana on minions and heroes and will have a way to quickly heal instead of going back to fountain or wait for the regeneration. The globes will serve like a bonus potions, restoring your stats gradually.

"Look, a regeneration globe, let's leave it on the ground for the heroes" - Stupid Minion

Positive feedbacks ?

Very well, now why would i want that quickly to talk about the feedbacks ?

First,it is because i think many mechanics can change before the final version of the game. They won't change the core gameplay but they might switch their hero creation or playstyle. Currently the heroes feels a lot like the one in LoL with many spamming spells and good all around moveset but we can see some very interesting new hero concept such as Murky or Abatur, hero that are not designed to kill other heroes. Murky is a hero that destroy the base and Abatur is a hero that can jump on any allied unit and support it with speed boost or shield, a global support if you wish.

But what i think they won't change is the intention of the game or the global feeling, and i think these intentions can be seen when you look at the feedbacks. Like i previously said, LoL is a more forgiving game than Dota 2 and promotes agression.And if some of you readers are smart, i think you already have many quick guesses on them in Heroes of the Storm.

If you look at the Regen globe that minions drops, you can see that they allow hero to quickly be back into the fight. They can trade blow and spells with an opponent and not have to back to base and lose 45 s. So are these orbs a positive or a negative feedbacks ? Although there are situation in which a player will kill another, and will use the orb and keep farming the lane experience, from my experience, their are used to negate the harassment effect of spells. Not having to back to base from harassment means you can't be expelled of the lanes so it is negative feedback to me.

Of course, it could be easily changed into a positive feedbacks by changing the value the globes regens, or even make them heal the player instantly when grabbing them.

Another good thing to look at is the experience system. All of the experience gained is gained for the whole team, meaning every heroes will gain their next level at the same time. I have very mixed feeling about that, not due to the theoretical application but in a more practical way.

Here, the blue team has one and a half experience level deficit than the red team

In theory, it first allow the team that has the the lead to gain all of the ultimate ability together, meaning they will probably crush the next team fight, in this case that is a positive feedback.
On the other hand, it promotes teamwork since one player can't gain an advantage just for himself, everyone will get the bonus experience so he won't skyrocket regarding his level, meaning he is less able to solo killing than in other games.

But this feature don't punish bad plays or bad players, you can be a terrible player and feeding endlessly, you will always be as strong as your allies and this is why i think some abuse are possible. In others MOBA, if you are trailing behind in Gold or experience, maybe you are doing something wrong. Kills and death are also important, but you can't really judge someone on them since certain heroes are not meant to fight or to kill. Of course a 0 kills-25 death player is probably bad...

In the end, i think this system is wonderful when playing as a team or with friends, no one is left behind and dying don't punish your team. But like many systems, it will be tainted by very bad and toxic players and believe me, there are a lots of them. So to me, this shared experience is more a negative feedback, to prevent snowballing and promotes teamwork (but teamwork is nice).
 

A new approach to MOBA 

So the real reason i wanted to talk directly about the feedbacks is to talk about the approach Blizzard is having on MOBA.

Heroes of the storm, by the mechanics may be called a casual MOBA. Casual is not an insult, not everyone are hardcore player, i know some hardcore casual players having played more than 3000 hours on Candy Crush. But the real question is WHY did Blizzard chose to make a more casual MOBA ?

First, look at the market. From the top of my head, i can name an impressive number of MOBA/A-RTS  :Dota 2, LoL, Infinite Crisis, Dead Island Epidemic, Smite,Strife, Heroes of Newerth...
Look at how many are on the market in just 5 years, and there many others coming soon, Crytek is also creating one ! The market is really saturated according to me and it is very hard to persuade players to change games.

Why is it relevant ? Since MOBA are very complex games, it takes a lot of investment to learn and master a new one, learning all the Champions/Heroes, learning all the items, all the strategies...
So why not make a MOBA that is easier to learn, that people can very quickly dive into, why not make even make a MOBA that people will play but can keep playing the other game they are currently playing.

I think Blizzard are perfectly aware of that, and knows that since they are probably a bit late to the party, will target a more friendly and less skilled game audience. When you look at the mechanics, at the system that really prevent any snowballing and solo plays, you can see they don't want the same players as Dota 2 or LoL. That doesn't means that Heroes of the Storm doesn't have any depth, it just means that you can play Dota 2 all day, and just play a relaxed one game of Heroes of the storm.

And maybe by targeting the Casual players to MOBAs, the players will be interested in this genre and can become hardcore some days. Look at Heroes of the Storm like the pottery introduction class you took in College, it is easier than the advanced pottery class but maybe some of the student will discover a new passion. 
 

Viability of MOBAs

Now we are approaching the end of this article and i would like to discuss with you about E-Sport. Whether you agree or not, E-Sport is there and it is a real sport. Look at the the International 4 on ESPN or the LCS if you want, look at players getting recognized a professional athletes in the US.

The international 4 was broadcasted on ESPN just like any major sport event.

Competitive viability and player recognition is very important to all of the versus games, whether they are MOBAs, RTS or fighting games. Having a huge competitive scene shows that your game is doing very well, that you have enough player to have a huge skill gap between the beginner level and the master level.
Success brings even more success. If your game is recognized as one of the best in his domain, people might want to try it, just for the experience maybe.

Having an active competitive scene will also "force" the developers to listen and update the game with balances patches and new content, a virtuous cycle. Of course, just because a game doesn't have a huge success doesn't mean the game is bad, it just means there are fewer player on it.

Heroes of the Storm makes us asking the question  : " Can more casual games have a competitive scene ? " There are many examples that would tell us that it is very possible, when you think about it, there are eating pie contest everywhere. Just because something is more relaxed and less complicated than chess doesn't mean there won't be competitions.

But for a true competitive pro scene to really exists, something is needed : Money. For a game to be viable in the competitive scene, there need to be enough money to be viable to live from it and the last MOBAs showed it was possible to live from winnings at videogames. If you want high level play, players need to train, so they need to play, and they need money to pay rent and food.

And the 2014 numbers are not even known yet.... 

To do that, the community must be big enough, start doing some event on their own and attract some publicity OR the developers themselves must invest the money. Valve did that by offering huge prize pool at their own tournament and Riot have direct contracts with the player. Of course, this is only available if the developers have enough money to sustain their player which means at some point, if the game doesn't earn enough money, the prize pool will decrease and the players might leave for  a more lucrative game.

So in the end, i think that the best course of action for Blizzard will be to invest part of the benefits of the game into tournament which means the business model is very important. If they don't do that, i fear that the fact Heroes of the storm is a second MOBA for the player (like i previously explained why) won't have a enough players to attract more player and thus beginning the virtuous cycle i mentioned. With so many competitors, they have to force the pro scene themselves.

To Finish

I think there aren't many more things i could say to you since this is just an introduction. Of course, i didn't explained why these games are so popular, that, you will have to find out yourselves.

Again, i want to clarify that all of these MOBAs are great games and even if i don't like some intentions, there are all perfectly justified. Dota, LoL or Heroes of the Storm are all greats, and none are inferior to the others, it is all player preferences. 

So here we are, i hope you liked that article and if i managed to transmit the love i have for these games, i think it is enough for me. So what about you ? What MOBA is made for you ?

Do you prefer playing a hardcore team based game that will punish you to the ground ?
Do you want to feel very strong by landing skillshots ?
Or do you want a more relaxed game ?

It is all up to you, there is a MOBA for everyone. I would just like encourage you to try one of them because despite all of the bad matches, all of the toxic players, all of the rage, all of the things you have to learn, all of the stress, the panicking, the flame, the nerf and buff, the injustice...

Despite all of that, there are these perfect moment when you will feel that they are wonderful games, and you will learn to love them :)

See you next time !