There seems to be a very strong feedback loop in most MOBAs. As you get further ahead of the other team, the stronger your character is and the easier it is to kill their minions, gaining even more gold and xp. I remember one match during the DOTA International championship where the commentators noted the game was “basically over” before any tower had fallen, since one team was too far ahead of the other.
There would be many ways to solve this problem (gradually reduce the cost of items over time, or increase the xp and gold gained from minions over time?) but that’s another issue.
What really needs addressing is the feedback loop in the MOBA industry: the more popular a game is, the more money it can afford to spend on advertising and tournaments, the more likely players are to focus on that game.
On the one hand, this has led to amazing things for gaming in general. If it weren’t for League of Legends and Dota’s domination of the industry, they wouldn’t be able to afford such amazing prize pools that make headlines even outside of the gaming industry and draw validity to the sport.
However, by focusing so exclusively on a few games, few styles of play, it will be impossible for the genre to grow. EA recently shut down Dawngate saying they were “not seeing the progress we’d hoped for”. Clearly they are not talking about progress in the field of game design. They’re talking about playerbase and profit. There’s no doubt that LoL and Dota’s huge success has colored their expectations.
And Dawngate isn’t the only new MOBA to fall by the wayside.
Not long ago Fates Forever released as the first Mobile MOBA on iPad, but quickly fell out of sight and is currently not even in the top-200 top-grossing apps.
Michail Katkoff suggested this may be because they are not charging enough money. All characters could be purchased for $20, so there was nothing more for “top spenders” to buy.
Which brings up another feedback loop in games: the free-to-play model. Conventional wisdom says that only 1% of players are going to spend money in your free-to-play game, but they are going to spend a lot of it. With that in mind, more and more games are focusing their monetization efforts on those specific whales, the thought being that money is no object for these players, and they’re just as likely to purchase the same item if it is $10 or $20, so why not charge more.
And of course with such monetization structures in place that say “you’re not making a dent in this game unless you spend upwards of $100”, is it any wonder that the majority of players do not spend anything?
But are developers to blame for this, or are gamers? There have been plenty of games that attempted a more… egalitarian pricing structure, but it didn’t make a dent in their spread and only hurt their final income.
So what do we do about this? How do we break out of the feedback loop? Perhaps Captain planet was right: the power is ours. Instead of spending another dozen hours this weekend (gobble gobble) playing your favorite eSport, play other games!
A new MOBA, Vain Glory, recently came out on the iPad, and Tome is just now up on Steam (from the people that made the way for Clash of Clans no less). See what they have to offer to the genre.
FATES is charactor so cute.