What's With the MOBA craze?

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Moba's are all the rage today. I haven't really play a lot of them but I have it on Steam. Could someone here enlighten us on the strengths of this genre and how they work.

Dota is very popular. What makes this game so popular and what are the mechanics of them?

[darkleo]

Dota, League of legends, Smite all these moba's have their own things about them and certain gameplay and graphics and all that jazz. But they all share 1 similar. is that its a 5v5 tower defense game where you have to push into the enemy teams base and destroy their (Nexus, Ancient, Monster, AKA: Really big building or creature that when destroyed will win your team the game). The appeal from these games are that you and your team will have to strategize which heroes you need making your team compatible + have very good synergy. Most of the time you'll have a (tank), 1 or 2 (supports) (depends on the game) A (jungler) (optional for some games), (or easier translated as a hero that can gain levels and experience without going into the lanes with others heroes). Then the (carry)who is the main damaging unit of your team. he will focus on killing the monsters around him for money and try to get items to get really buff as fast as possible.

The main gameplay of these games are usually, there are 3 lanes from 1 teams base to the others teams base that is covered by towers that will attack any enemy that comes near. The goal is to get across these lanes to get to the Nexus, Ancient etc. usually when the game starts there's a hero pick period then after a set amount of time the game will start and creeps, minions will appear near your base and head down these lanes to help you push through to get to the enemy ancient/nexus. Killing these minions on the opposing faction will grant you money and you want to try and focus getting the (Last Hit) on these so you are granted the gold. Your heroes have levels that assist with being able pick skills and help you push through to either take down a tower or even a enemy hero. Depending on the game they have different level caps. Example being (League of legends is level 18, as to where Dota is level 25) You want to be able to accumulate enough money to buy items that will help your hero with taking down enemy heroes/towers or even to help out your teammates. Most of these games also have small objectives that can give your team small to big boost to help you persevere through the enemy's defenses. Example being (League of legends being (Dragon) which gives all your teammates 210 gold or (Baron) which upon death gives 300 gold too all + a buff that increases all your teams stats. For Dota (Roshan) Upon death will also grant all your teammates 200 gold each + another 200 for the person who slays roshan and a item called aegis the immortal which whomever picks it up will have another chance at life when they're health bar depletes to 0.

Seems like i'm trying to cover too much so ill just sum everything up. Basically you and your team are working together to take objective and push through enemy lines to destroy the major obective while the enemy are doing the same.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Ok so your base is to destroy your opponents "base" (like Starcraft), but instead of having to destroy all buildings you destroy their main building?

How long do games usually last?

Are upgrades you purchase instant?

Do your levels continue the more you play the game or do you lose them at the end of each match?

Are "lanes" areas you must traverse? Is there a way around them?

[darkleo]

Its difficult to give you the entire way the game is play until you play it yourself but ill do my best to answer your question to a point where you don't get confused.

Its somewhat similar to starcraft where you need to destroy like the enemy's command center so that you can win the game. There are other building within the enemy's base that when destroyed will make the minions your team spawn get stronger or spawn a real strong minion.

Most games depending on league or dota. Most league game can vary from around 25-45 minute games even going on for more than a hour if the game is that crazy. Dota the game are usually around 30-55 minutes long because dota is a little slower than league but still same aspect in a sense.

Upgrades you purchase are items. (Example: you play wow, you buy a sword, you get the swords effects) same with these games when you buy a item you get the effects of them immediately whether they give you 10 strength +50 damage so on and so forth. In both game you have a total of six slots of items your champion can hold. at the start of every new game you start with 0 items and a set amount of money so you may buy starting items then progress and get better items as the game goes on.

When you level up in the game you will be that level until you are maxed. When you die you lose no experience, when you start a new game everytime you will start at level 1 and have to work your way up.

Naturally you will be moving around the map mostly in the lanes. There are other ways around these lanes being the Jungle part of the map. That area is where basically enemy's cannot see you because there is what we call fog of war. you may only see a area around your hero + the area around all your partners. additional map vision you will learn once you try the game. The jungle is connected to all lanes and you can use them freely to be able to try and sneak around your enemy's for sneak attacks. The jungle also has neutral minions where they are not enemy nor ally and upon they're death they grant you money.

Also here is a map that almost all moba's use nowadays.
devilesk.com/media/images/dota_minimap.jpg

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

So if you kill a champion, what do you get in return? Do you just get a lot of money, or do you get some kind of item.

I'm familiar with the fog of war, but the map made it a lot clearer to me what you were saying.

What are some common strategies people use?

[darkleo]

Killing enemy's only give money. (UNLESS!! in dota where you have items on you that are clearly stated as dropped upon death where there are only 2 items) The money earned is a nice chunk of cash which is almost a necessity for attaining items for late game. also a pretty obvious fact but its good knowledge after killing the enemy of course they will have a death timer so you will have time in the lane by yourself to focus on either last hitting minions/creep or using it to strategically gank someone to help out someone in another lane.

Well considering that league and dota are pretty similar games in the fact that they are moba's and that you need to do pretty much the same thing to attain victory. the gameplay of them both are completely different. there's almost not 1 thing similar about the gameplay of both games because they just have huge differences. which is actually problems for some people because they get so attached to one game they try the other game and just give up after the first game of it they play and call it bad. which is why I was happy when I played dota1 and learned league as well btw if you want specific strategy's of both games I have no problems attempting to explain but it might be another 4 paragraphs long. just a warning.




www.rosendaal.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/league-of-legends-map.jpg a map of league so you can see how similar they are.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 19, 2014 18:05:28 GMT -5 darkleo said:

Killing enemy's only give money. (UNLESS!! in dota where you have items on you that are clearly stated as dropped upon death where there are only 2 items) The money earned is a nice chunk of cash which is almost a necessity for attaining items for late game. also a pretty obvious fact but its good knowledge after killing the enemy of course they will have a death timer so you will have time in the lane by yourself to focus on either last hitting minions/creep or using it to strategically gank someone to help out someone in another lane.

Well considering that league and dota are pretty similar games in the fact that they are moba's and that you need to do pretty much the same thing to attain victory. the gameplay of them both are completely different. there's almost not 1 thing similar about the gameplay of both games because they just have huge differences. which is actually problems for some people because they get so attached to one game they try the other game and just give up after the first game of it they play and call it bad. which is why I was happy when I played dota1 and learned league as well btw if you want specific strategy's of both games I have no problems attempting to explain but it might be another 4 paragraphs long. just a warning.




www.rosendaal.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/league-of-legends-map.jpg a map of league so you can see how similar they are.

What are the major differences between the two?

[darkleo]

Lets see ill start with some basic stuff. first of all of course most heroes in both games are just different. If you play dota first you learn that last hitting its a little harder than league of legends, why is that you ask? Because the enemy heroes can deny you of getting a minion/creep kill. [what does denying mean?] Deny in dota means instead of last hitting your opponents creeps you can actually kill your own minions with your auto attacks after they have lost a specific amount of hp%. so if a creep in dota is at 40% of its HP you can start hitting it yourself to either, try and throw off the enemy's timing on when to use his basic auto attack, or time your attack so that you gain the last hit on your own minions when they are very very low. League of legends does not have creep denying so last hitting in league of legends is alot easier to me.

Another major difference you'll notice that in both league and dota you can see around the center of the entire map is a giant river that runs across it. Like I stated in my old post this is where some team objective are like the dragon and baron.
For dota its almost the same thing in the river the team objective Roshan is in the river. But also there are runes that randomly appear after every 2 minute mark of the game giving you specific buffs that can really assist you. The buffs consist of, (Double damage, Regeneration, Haste, Illusion, Invisibility).

Double damage - Pretty simple idea takes your heroes base damage and doubles it. (Example: if you have a base damage of 67 it will give you another +67 damage)

Regeneration - Also simple concept will replenish your health and mana bar unless you reach full on both. Upon doing so makes the buff erase off you or if you are damaged by a enemy upon gaining the buff.

Haste - Another simple concept of making you run max speed. (btw which is 522 in dota)

Illusion - Makes 2 copys of your hero they do very minimal damage and take around 300% extra damage. one of the weaker runes but are very good use for scouting the enemy's side of the jungle because they also give vision.

Invisibility - as the name states it makes you invisible until you use a spell or auto attack or are damaged by a enemy.

Some difference in the jungle are that in dota all of the minions you kill just give you gold with no buffs. In league there are actually 2 minions on each teams side that give you a specific buff that is actually useful toward helping your team succeed.

The Ancient Golem buff. Aka - blue buff, gives your champion a 3 minute buff that gives you massive mana regen and 20% Cooldown Reduction to your spells. Meaning that if you have a spell that is say 10 seconds long and you cast it. it will be 10 second cooldown. But if you cast it with the blue buff its now 8 seconds which is a very big difference in league.

The Fire Lizard Buff. Aka - red buff, gives your champions basic attack a slowing property and damage or time when you attack a minion or enemy hero. Normally you want to give this to a ranged hero because it would benefit them more.

There are probably a bunch of other difference I could keep going on about but im just trying to give you a basic idea of some stuff that these games have that are unique to each other and what makes them different games even though they are Moba's.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 19, 2014 18:31:53 GMT -5 darkleo said:

Lets see ill start with some basic stuff. first of all of course most heroes in both games are just different. If you play dota first you learn that last hitting its a little harder than league of legends, why is that you ask? Because the enemy heroes can deny you of getting a minion/creep kill. [what does denying mean?] Deny in dota means instead of last hitting your opponents creeps you can actually kill your own minions with your auto attacks after they have lost a specific amount of hp%. so if a creep in dota is at 40% of its HP you can start hitting it yourself to either, try and throw off the enemy's timing on when to use his basic auto attack, or time your attack so that you gain the last hit on your own minions when they are very very low. League of legends does not have creep denying so last hitting in league of legends is alot easier to me.

Another major difference you'll notice that in both league and dota you can see around the center of the entire map is a giant river that runs across it. Like I stated in my old post this is where some team objective are like the dragon and baron.
For dota its almost the same thing in the river the team objective Roshan is in the river. But also there are runes that randomly appear after every 2 minute mark of the game giving you specific buffs that can really assist you. The buffs consist of, (Double damage, Regeneration, Haste, Illusion, Invisibility).

Double damage - Pretty simple idea takes your heroes base damage and doubles it. (Example: if you have a base damage of 67 it will give you another +67 damage)

Regeneration - Also simple concept will replenish your health and mana bar unless you reach full on both. Upon doing so makes the buff erase off you or if you are damaged by a enemy upon gaining the buff.

Haste - Another simple concept of making you run max speed. (btw which is 522 in dota)

Illusion - Makes 2 copys of your hero they do very minimal damage and take around 300% extra damage. one of the weaker runes but are very good use for scouting the enemy's side of the jungle because they also give vision.

Invisibility - as the name states it makes you invisible until you use a spell or auto attack or are damaged by a enemy.

Some difference in the jungle are that in dota all of the minions you kill just give you gold with no buffs. In league there are actually 2 minions on each teams side that give you a specific buff that is actually useful toward helping your team succeed.

The Ancient Golem buff. Aka - blue buff, gives your champion a 3 minute buff that gives you massive mana regen and 20% Cooldown Reduction to your spells. Meaning that if you have a spell that is say 10 seconds long and you cast it. it will be 10 second cooldown. But if you cast it with the blue buff its now 8 seconds which is a very big difference in league.

The Fire Lizard Buff. Aka - red buff, gives your champions basic attack a slowing property and damage or time when you attack a minion or enemy hero. Normally you want to give this to a ranged hero because it would benefit them more.

There are probably a bunch of other difference I could keep going on about but im just trying to give you a basic idea of some stuff that these games have that are unique to each other and what makes them different games even though they are Moba's.

So you can actually harm your own minions and in some situations this is encouraged? Do they do this to prevent spamming of attacks?

How much stronger is the average minion compared to the champion? How many minions could I take out with my champion?

[darkleo]

Yes in dota it is very encouraged to (deny) your own minion because you are denying them experience and gold from them taking the last hit on it. If they're minion kills your minion they get the same amount of xp as if they kill it but they just don't get the gold for the last hit. So denying is a very Crucial part of the game. also when you deny a creep you get something like only 5 or 10% of the experience that the minion would originally give.

As for killing minions with your champion you are pretty much free to kill as many as you possibly could because you most likely wont be even getting hit by anything unless its a enemy champion. Your minions will be tanking theirs for you so you are free to take the last hits after they lower they're hp's to close to dead. That is the core of both games essentially. you wait until minions get low from either your minions or your tower and you take the last hit for gold. If you are in a lane by yourself doing this over and over eventually since you have your creeps which its usually 5 with the exception of league which spawns a 6th one every 4 or 5 waves which I will get into shortly. But when you are last hitting the enemy minions you are pushing your lane into they're tower which is good because you want to kill these because it is the essential part of the game to reach your final goal of reaching they're Ancient/Nexus. Towers in dota and now in league both give gold for destroying the tower yourself and no I don't mean going Spartacus on it and going head first by yourself to destroy it. I mean just like a minion when you attain the last hit you gain alot of bonus gold + you give your team 200 each in dota and 100 in League.

Ok about that 6th minion in league. its what you would call a Siege minion and it doesn't launch cannons by Trebuchet but its actually a specific minion that takes 50% less damage from the tower and it makes it so the tower specifically focuses it so that you have more time to deal damage to the enemy tower!

Now about those Trebuchet's actually dota basically has those. Just like league every 4th or 5th wave of minions they spawn a Siege minion that has a specific damage type to buildings so it does bonus damage to them and the towers do not automatically target them like league. (Another big difference for ya).

While we are on the topic of towers and turrets ill give you a little insight on them.

Dota 2 turrets AI is a little weird when you first play but eventually you understand how it works. normally it just focuses on the closest enemy it see's and it will start firing whatever those things fire at it. Whether its a hero or a minion. when you attack a enemy champion under the tower, the tower will continue to kill whatever it was focused on and then it will turn to you and start shooting you unless you know specific ways to prevent that from happening. (Advanced stuff)

League is a little different with league there are 3 melee minions and 2 caster minions and the occasional siege minion. it actually prioritizes its attack pattern as such. Siege minion> melee minion > ranged minion. But unlike dota if a tower is attack a minion and you attack a champion near said tower. it will instantaneously switch to you and fire at you until you get out of its firing radius. There are no special tricks other than running to get a tower to stop attacking you.

Also 1 more thing to note about towers is that in dota tower damage is consistant always doing the same amount of damage to you no matter how long the game has progressed or how many times you've been hit by the tower.

In league though if you are under attack by a tower with each hit it actually increases its damage by 25% maxing out at 125% damage increase until it dies and btw if the tower switches from hero to hero the damage increase stays. so if your hit 5 times by 1 tower, die then it switches to your partner they will be taking the damage of the tower+125%.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 19, 2014 19:02:37 GMT -5 darkleo said:

Yes in dota it is very encouraged to (deny) your own minion because you are denying them experience and gold from them taking the last hit on it. If they're minion kills your minion they get the same amount of xp as if they kill it but they just don't get the gold for the last hit. So denying is a very Crucial part of the game. also when you deny a creep you get something like only 5 or 10% of the experience that the minion would originally give.

As for killing minions with your champion you are pretty much free to kill as many as you possibly could because you most likely wont be even getting hit by anything unless its a enemy champion. Your minions will be tanking theirs for you so you are free to take the last hits after they lower they're hp's to close to dead. That is the core of both games essentially. you wait until minions get low from either your minions or your tower and you take the last hit for gold. If you are in a lane by yourself doing this over and over eventually since you have your creeps which its usually 5 with the exception of league which spawns a 6th one every 4 or 5 waves which I will get into shortly. But when you are last hitting the enemy minions you are pushing your lane into they're tower which is good because you want to kill these because it is the essential part of the game to reach your final goal of reaching they're Ancient/Nexus. Towers in dota and now in league both give gold for destroying the tower yourself and no I don't mean going Spartacus on it and going head first by yourself to destroy it. I mean just like a minion when you attain the last hit you gain alot of bonus gold + you give your team 200 each in dota and 100 in League.

Ok about that 6th minion in league. its what you would call a Siege minion and it doesn't launch cannons by Trebuchet but its actually a specific minion that takes 50% less damage from the tower and it makes it so the tower specifically focuses it so that you have more time to deal damage to the enemy tower!

Now about those Trebuchet's actually dota basically has those. Just like league every 4th or 5th wave of minions they spawn a Siege minion that has a specific damage type to buildings so it does bonus damage to them and the towers do not automatically target them like league. (Another big difference for ya).

While we are on the topic of towers and turrets ill give you a little insight on them.

Dota 2 turrets AI is a little weird when you first play but eventually you understand how it works. normally it just focuses on the closest enemy it see's and it will start firing whatever those things fire at it. Whether its a hero or a minion. when you attack a enemy champion under the tower, the tower will continue to kill whatever it was focused on and then it will turn to you and start shooting you unless you know specific ways to prevent that from happening. (Advanced stuff)

League is a little different with league there are 3 melee minions and 2 caster minions and the occasional siege minion. it actually prioritizes its attack pattern as such. Siege minion> melee minion > ranged minion. But unlike dota if a tower is attack a minion and you attack a champion near said tower. it will instantaneously switch to you and fire at you until you get out of its firing radius. There are no special tricks other than running to get a tower to stop attacking you.

Also 1 more thing to note about towers is that in dota tower damage is consistant always doing the same amount of damage to you no matter how long the game has progressed or how many times you've been hit by the tower.

In league though if you are under attack by a tower with each hit it actually increases its damage by 25% maxing out at 125% damage increase until it dies and btw if the tower switches from hero to hero the damage increase stays. so if your hit 5 times by 1 tower, die then it switches to your partner they will be taking the damage of the tower+125%.

So League has caster classes. I'm imaging these units use some sort of spell system, what spells do they have?

[darkleo]

Sorry they're official name is spell caster. But they're just ranged minions just like dota except dota is 4 melee minions and 1 ranged minion. no specific spells but normal attacks from ranged. my poor choice of words my bad.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 19, 2014 19:22:00 GMT -5 darkleo said:

Sorry they're official name is spell caster. But they're just ranged minions just like dota except dota is 4 melee minions and 1 ranged minion. no specific spells but normal attacks from ranged. my poor choice of words my bad.

Are turrets essentially placed around the base of your enemy or can you summon them ala Starcraft?

[darkleo]

They are in the same spot with every match you play never to be moved

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Who are the top level players at these games?

[darkleo]

There are no clear players whom are the best but there are a bunch of teams whom are very good I can name a few for both games but there's no way I can remember them all off the top of my head.

Dota 2 - Team EG, Team DK, Cloud9, Invictus gaming.

League of Legends - Cloud9, Team solo mid, Team SKT.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Aug 19, 2014 19:42:09 GMT -5 darkleo said:

There are no clear players whom are the best but there are a bunch of teams whom are very good I can name a few for both games but there's no way I can remember them all off the top of my head.

Dota 2 - Team EG, Team DK, Cloud9, Invictus gaming.

League of Legends - Cloud9, Team solo mid, Team SKT.

They make very good money for these championships right? Far more than fighters correct?

[darkleo]

Lets just put it this way. Evo USF4 was 25k

Last league of legends biggest tournament was 1mill

Last dota huge tournament was 10.7 million.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

It's a joke how little the fighting game tournaments pay. Larger sponsors and more views contributes to it paying so much. You have to beat out everyone else in a random as game to make what you could at a crappy job.

Better to get good at Moba's then.