What is a good character design in MOBA games?
Over the span of a decade as of now, we have seen the boom in MOBA games.
For those of you who don’t know what MOBA is, “MOBA” or “Multiplayer online battle arena” is a genre of online games. You control a Single character in the game and team up with other characters to secure an objective, that is usually involved with destroying the enemy’s base.
The most popular MOBA games as of 2018 still remain to be DoTA 2 (Defense of the Ancients) and LoL (League of Legends).
League of Legends and DoTA 2 have made it into the limelight of conventional competitive gaming with their enormous Prize pools in their main tournaments. DoTA as of 2017 has offered $24,687,919.00 in The International 2017 while LoL has offered $5,070,000.00 in their LoL World Championship.
With a lot of prize money going their way, the developers of these games have kept on adding more characters in the game to play. We have seen favorites and we have seen the most reviled characters, and we are here to talk about a good character design in a MOBA game.
Lets take “Wraith King” from DoTA 2 for example.
A character from a MOBA game usually has skills or spells it can cast which makes it stand out from the rest of the characters. The character in Question, Wraith King has the following skills.
Wraithfire Blast: Wraith King sears an enemy unit with spectral fire, dealing damage and stunning, then dealing damage over time and slowing the target.
Vampiric Aura: Nearby friendly units restore health based on the damage they deal when attacking enemy units.
Mortal Strike: Wraith King passively gains a chance to deal bonus damage on an attack. Kill non-player units when it triggers and convert them into a skeleton army.
Reincarnation: Wraith King’s form regroups after death, allowing him to resurrect when killed in battle. Upon death, enemy units in a 900 radius will be slowed.
Of course it seems all well and good when you read it out, but when you are a player in the game, it seems as though the only reason one would play Wraith King is to reincarnate. The character lacks depth and one can say he could be of poor design. Hmmm?
And then let’s take Nature’s Prophet from the same game for example.
Sprout: Sprouts a ring of trees around a unit, trapping it in place.
Teleportation: Teleports to any point on the map.
Nature’s Call: Converts an area of trees into Treants. Treants have 550 health and deal 34–38 damage.
Wrath of Nature: Damaging energy bounces around the map, striking enemies close to the cast point that are in vision. Each enemy hit beyond the first adds damage.
On hindsight, it doesn’t appear that the hero does much, or the skills that interesting. But that is not the case.
Trees are an integral part of DoTA 2 which allows players to hide in them and stay safe from enemy vision. And when you put it that way, we see that Nature’s Prophet’s Nature’s Call is a skill which can destroy trees and Spawn little units which he can control.
Also his ability to teleport anywhere on the map seems to be an overpowered skill, except for the fact that it isn’t. Nature’s Prophet isn’t exactly a tanky character. He is fairly squishy and can easily die if he teleports to a wrong location.
A double edged sword to punish the fact that he has complete freedom. And that is exactly why Nature’s Prophet is a well designed character, while Wraith King isn’t.
Of course DoTA 2 doesn’t only have Nature’s Prophet, but also other characters who prove to have a level of depth which proves to be fun and extremely captivating to the long line of MOBA gamers.
Invoker, Timbersaw, Visage, Meepo, Arc Warden, Kunkka are just a few examples of really well designed heroes.
But that doesn’t mean Heroes like Wraith King don’t serve their purpose.On the contrary, they manage to balance out a team and provide various other factors like tanking abilities.
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