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Gerudo@lemm.ee 5 weeks agoPreface that it is an early alpha build and everything can change.
Yes, I have played it. It is literally just a moba. It feels like they took Dota and slapped 5% of an fps to it. The matches can be way too long, and it suffers from the snowballing effect that if you don’t get a good start, it is really hard to be effective. If you are 10 mins in a match and getting outplayed, you probably arent going to enjoy the remaining 20-30 mins. If you took Dota and modded it with 1st person controls, you’d be almost there with this game.
There is some good. The vertical elements do help, and the jungle aspects, along with destroyables, do help somewhat to make up lost ground in your build. The art design is pretty good for being alpha, and I do enjoy the map. There are lots of crisscross paths and hidden areas. There are also some map mechanics that are fresh, like 1 way viewable smoke screens.
If you don’t like mobas, I’d almost guarantee you won’t like this. It’s not a new, genre defining experience, and it doesn’t pull enough fps features to make it different. 4/10 as it sits.
Carighan@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Oh interesting, so it’s not at all like early Overwatch 1 which was way more FPS and was only compared to a MOBA because of the comparatively mild focus on abilities?
That’s both good and bad to hear, but yeah, sounds like overall it has a long long way to go.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 5 weeks ago
I’ve only had the chance to play a handful of matches but I can echo those sentiments so far, I think. Another disclaimer though is that I’ve only played random matchmaking, not any premade stacks or squads.
The resource battle sets the gameplay experience apart from stuff like Overwatch or TF2 - and not really in a good way (so far). It does get very snowbally, but if it’s intended to be a team-oriented game like Dota it’s possible I’m not seeing all the intended catch-up mechanics. It does seem like whichever team gets the best start just wins on stats, which makes the quality of matchmaking impact your fun a LOT. Uneven teams lead to very boring matches. I’ve also run into the classic Dota problem of “finish plz” - where a dominant team farms kills outside your base instead of finishing the game.
All aspects of the game are clearly alpha though - and there is potential here. Like highlighted the map is great and I think the hero designs are good (both visually and mechanically). With both four abilities and four slots for active items the game looks to be making its niche complexity and high skill ceiling - much like Dota (unsurprising given Icefrog is designing this).
I also think the MOBA aspect of pushing and farming isn’t necessarily a bad concept as it does introduce a bunch of micro-objectives which drive player movements and create emergent gameplay. It just needs better balancing I think.