MOBAs, ARTS, DOTA-likes, and AoS maps... With so many names floating around for our beloved genre, it can be easy to have our conversations get side-tracked by questions like "what counts as a MOBA?"
In this article, I'm going to explore how other game genres are named, how those approaches could apply for us, and why "lane-pushing game" is what worked best for me and this website.
I want to draw attention to one of the most interesting developments we've seen in the last five years of lane-pushing game design: the battlefield of Korean studio Nexon's recent lane-pushing game Ascendant One. It's a sphere.
This sci-fi themed game takes place on a planet: an actual 3D planet! There are six lanes which run from north to south, with bases at the poles. Gameplay takes place on the half of the planet that is "sunny" at any given time.
The planet rotates at a slow but steady pace: completing a full rotation every 18 minutes. There are usually three lanes in play at
Three years ago, Dota2 finally broke away from maintaining parity with DotA Allstars, and started to explore new horizons under the continued stewardship of its lead developer Icefrog. Moving to a new platform is an exciting thing, and being on the source engine has opened up "infinite" possibilities for what Dota2 could become.
In this article I want to explore how some of those possibilities have been realized through the last three years of content patches in Dota2, and discuss how DotA's roots may still play a role in its future.
The recurring theme here is that content patches have
I was recently asked about 6v6 in mobas. What an interesting topic! There aren't any commercial lane-pushing games which use 6v6 as a serious/primary game mode, probably because there's no reason to mess with what's tried-and-true in your big-budget production.
In this article I want to explore how 6v6 could be done right. Lets dive right in!
The moba genre has largely settled on an equilibrium with two armour types: Physical Armour and Magical Armour. Why is this the case, and could expanding the use of armours or resistances lead to greater complexity and depth?
In this discussion we're focusing on armour types and resistances that players interact with. The rules that decide how much damage a ranged troop deals to a catapult are "environmental tuning", and aren't the focus of this article.
Stuns are one of the most common forms of disable in lane-pushing games. Right now, genre-wide, around 50% of heroes have a stun, and this plays a substantial and understated role in shaping the gameplay and hero combat of these games.
In this article we'll discuss what stuns are, how they impact gameplay, and why my game Causeway adopted a "no stuns" policy.
Just about every commercial MOBA shares the same victory condition of "destroy the enemy base". Is there anything that could be done to introduce some variety?
Before we begin, the word MOBA is used more inclusively by some people than others, so for clarification we need to divide the answer into two cases: lane-pushing games, and arenas.
I recently read a book called How Life Imitates Chess by former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov.
It describes the strategic analysis and decision-making techniques he developed while competing at the highest level of chess, and shares how the same techniques are applicable to decision-making in other areas of life.
In this article, I'm going to analyse lane-pushing games using Kasparov's model. Warcraft III actually gets a mention in the book as "a distillation of the MTQ concept", so I find this a particularly exciting and appropriate exercise!
MTQ stands for Material, Time, Qual
I'm sure most of you are familiar with the concept of drafting, the pre-match ritual in which players negotiate the characters that will be in-play during a match. Typical drafting phases consist of an alternating sequence of picks and bans. I've listed the drafting sequence for several commercial games below. There's some variation, but they're all pretty similar: