As July approaches, and with it the DotA International, it seems as good a time as any to issue a
"state of the MOBA world" post.
But there's a problem: I don't play any mainstream MOBAs anymore. Not because they're not good games. They're tremendously fun and can totally be worth
the massive time investment they demand from their players. No, I avoid mainstream MOBAs because the
player base is so saturated with people who participate in the overarching
"metagame" that, to a casual gamer, or even just a gamer who plays
other games, the flow of play is alien, and the game takes a back seat to the surrounding
bullshit. Sure, sometimes this can lead
to sublime moments of play, things like late-game comeback kills from Puck when
he dies while casting his nuke, buys back, then teleports to his
still-travelling nuke, or full team wipes from a skilled mid-game Luna. If that second example seems dated to veteran
DotA players, it's because it dates
back to "my day," when Lycan could wolf out at level 16 and solo the
Throne. Even that ancient example of
metagame cements it: DotA has always
been a game about studying lists of heroes, selecting from said list of heroes,
then mashing them against one another in a prescribed way, and proves largely
indecipherable to casual players and outsiders alike. There have been moments where this list was
taking shape, exciting sexy moments where a game unfolded, instead of simply
executing itself through a set of imperfect human instruments. There is, beyond DotA itself, a second layer of game there that erects walls to
players who aren't willing to dedicate a considerable amount of time to playing
one very specific video game. I
understand the state of affairs in League
of Legends is similar, and Heroes of
Newerth, DotA's stepsister,
relegated to the edge of every family photo, seems intent on making every
mistake that DotA makes, just to
prove that it can make the same game for the same price and fail miserably by
merit of not being included on Steam. So
how do you get away from these notions of metagame? You play lesser known MOBAs!
This method has been around for a while, ever since Demigod did some amazing things with asymmetry
that no one bothered to notice, but it's actually been growing more and more
prominent of late, as the body of interested players grows, along with the body
of jaded MOBA players interested in new experiences. There are two games in particular I've been playing
a lot of lately that "break the meta" delightfully, games that, while
they are getting noticed, don't have the colossal audience (and signal-noise
that goes with it) that has defined the mainstream MOBA genre contenders.
First up, there's Dawngate,
which proudly advertises its aim to "break the meta" on the front of
its website. It does so largely by
making the "meta" aspects of DotA
transparent sliders in its game, and making a strangely equal playing field for
most players, but the end result is surprisingly effective. I've been playing more and more Dawngate of late, and it's one of the
rare games that keeps getting better and better. Between fresh heroes that fit into the mold
of the game without destroying the balance altogether, balance tweaks that
address issues without rendering heroes wholly irrelevant, and a community that
seems genuinely interested in making their game a pleasant one to play, Dawngate is a strange beast in the MOBA
kingdom. Sure, there are some issues
where notions of metagame have cropped up, specifically wherein certain support
heroes can stack haste items to make themselves unstoppable buffing machines
capable of endlessly healing their teammates and never being caught by enemies,
ever. But this occurrence, infuriating
as it is, is rare, and easily fixed - Waystone just needs to prevent players
from having multiple copies of high level items, a mechanic which is already
implied in the way recommended items are developed, which needs to be
instituted if Waystone wants to stop Fluidity abuse.
Of course, Dawngate
is still in its infancy, and it seems very likely that a stronger metagame will
emerge with time, but for now I'm optimistic.
There's so much good stuff happening in Dawngate right now that the flaws, when they appear, are
simultaneously highly visible, extremely frustrating, and easily forgiven after
a single good round of play. The fact
that developers seem vested in keeping their game balanced and making it a fun,
enriching game to play alloys a lot of my fears that Dawngate may become DotA:
in a game focused almost entirely around team achievement, the sort of people
who want to break a game for others, the core metagaming audience, might have
trouble finding sound purchase, and the notion of balance is so central to Dawngate's development that it's tough
to imagine a future where it presents as massive, noisy, and sloppy a hero
catalog as DotA's.
There are other approaches to breaking the flow of meta, of
course, which brings me to Awesomenauts,
which takes the "who gives a fuck" approach to wrecking meta. Granted, I am not invested in the multiplayer
scene of Awesomenauts, and I'm not well
versed in it to-date, with only a handful of hours under my belt. I can already see some meta hanging out in
the game (movespeed is a must have) but, honestly, it's couched in so much
bombast, simple action, and weird, colorful fun that it's tough to
complain. What's more, Awesomenauts is a bit like a bag of
confetti: you just toss it into the air, and something fun happens. It's just a well crafted, fun game that
somehow finds itself lumped in with all these other insane creations, dedicated
to the projection of foul subsystems over their play. Awesomenauts
is so rooted in its core play that it is difficult to seeing its meta
overriding that to the extent that DotA's
does.
Even if the metagame does become a problem for me down the
line, Awesomenaut's reasonably sized
teams and robust AI options make it highly playable without involving the sort
of people who want to force others to play a metagame. It's tough, nearly impossible, to get more
than three adults to do anything together at a scheduled time, and nearly
impossible to assemble the five that most MOBAs want you to bring to bear. Forget DotA's
ten, that's an insane dream-world. But Awesomenauts caps its teams at three
each, which is the perfect number for assembling adults with adult
responsibilities on a VOIP service to dick around for a few hours, and even if
someone has to bail Awesomenauts remains the only MOBA I've seen to execute on
AI, which means that game with only two players in it is actually still pretty
fun. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's
playable, which is an incredible feat, considering the abysmal state of MOBA AI
in every other title.
I don't mean to rag on the notion of metagame here. It's a fine thing to have when you've the
time to invest in it. But to someone who
loves the MOBA genre, it can be the single biggest obstacle to getting a game
in. It's not enough that I have a core
skillset to play a given game, I need to study it and look at trends outside of
it to understand how my actions will fit into a larger game outside the game,
and I need to practice executing these strategies. The dedication that requires of me just isn't
something I can muster, especially as Steam's Summer Sale ticks on and I find
myself suddenly flush with amazing new titles, all of them clambering for my
attention as I prepare to teach a summer class and leave town for a bevy of
"Holy Shit We're All 30" weddings.
Sometimes it's nice to just be able to sit down, play a game, and enjoy
it for what it is. Dawngate and Awesomenauts execute on the promise of that concept in some
beautiful and unexpected ways.
