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i'll expand on it a bit
one of the things that makes mobas so compelling is the breadth of interactions between you and your teammates, your team and the enemy team, and both teams against the cpu controlled units. no two games are ever the same because of how the players play their heroes, or what skill build they go for, or what item build they choose. 99 times out of 100 if two teams consisting of the same players pick the same heroes for every game the outcome will be different. not a lot of games can claim that kind of variety and differentiation
to demonstrate, here is a short sequence from a game of dota 2 i played a while ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmmz5iKh2Ec
i'm the green guy who looks like he's in a modified magitek armor thingy
there are a lot of things happening in that clip. the red knight-looking dude pings me (displayed by the blue circle) to signal to his teammate, the orange player that looks like a mutant porcupine, that he wishes to attack me. the knight uses his "ultimate" ability and transforms into a dragon. the use of this ability alters the attributes of his hero: he moves a bit faster, he gains a ranged attack that does damage over time, and his second ability, a stun, can now be used from a short distance instead of its normal melee range. the dragon successfully stuns me at :13. i'm unable to move or act for 2 seconds, which is an eternity in moba time. the dragon gets one attack off after the stun which does about 70 points of damage to me. i'm pretty close to dying now. a few more attacks will kill me
my teammate, the blue lady, walks in and uses her stun ability on the dragon. he is now disabled for ~ 1.5 seconds. this gives me enough time to use my "ult" ability and throw out a projectile that does damage on the initial hit, slows the unit that it's hitting based on how much health they're missing, and can be pulled back to me at will; if i don't pull it back it does damage over time and slows whatever it hits. the dragon is now very low on health so he backs off. i use my second ability called "timber chain", an ability that shoots out a chain in a straight line and pulls me at a high speed to whatever tree it managed to hit, to put some distance between me and the enemy team because the orange player can kill me if i'm even a little close to him for more than 5 or 6 seconds
as me and my teammate are fleeing, at about the :20 mark, i use one of my two items. it's the thing in the bottom right square of the 2x3 grid on the bottom right of the screen. that item gains charges whenever on teammates and members of the opposing team use their abilities. it heals something like 17 HP and mana per charge. the use of that item brings me to about 33% health and 60% mana. definitely enough to survive and probably enough to turn the fight around
the enemy players continue their chase. the orange guy uses his "nasal goo" ability to slow down the blue lady and reduce her armor rating, which increases how much damage she will take from physical attacks. he keeps using his other ability throw out quills that do physical damage in a large aoe. that ability has a low mana cost and short cooldown so he can pretty much throw those quills out indefinitely and as often as he desires. as he throws another slow on her i use my "ult" ability again (it has a low cooldown as well) to damage him and slow him down a bit, hoping to save my teammate. unfortunately it triggers the orange guy's 3rd ability, which is to release a quills in an aoe based on how much damage he's taken in the past x seconds, independent of the cooldown of the manual quill release. the result of that is he gets off 2 quills in quick succession and does a lot of damage to her in ~.25 seconds. she realizes she's about to die so she turns back on him and throws her stun out, hoping to kill him with it. the dragon shows up again and uses his "breathe fire" ability, which is a high damage aoe spell. it hits her and she's on death's door. one more hit from his ranged attack will kill her
the dragon is able to get that last ranged attack off and gets the kill. however he happened to line himself up perfectly for my purposes. i see that i can timber chain over to the orange guy and kill him, and maybe hit the dragon on my way over there. i land the chain and as i'm passing through the dragon, i use my "whirling death" ability which does burst damage in a small aoe around my hero. the timber chain and the whirling death both hit the dragon and kill him. i manage to hit the orange guy at the end of the timber chain and kill him as well, along with a few of the enemy creeps. i get a ton of gold for that fight. that enables me to buy strong items early on in the game, which gives me a big advantage
stuff like that is constantly happening in mobas
the above is one tiny 30 second interaction between 4 players and a few of the CPU controlled units. and it's a simplified explanation of what's going on. it's pretty early in the game so no one in that skirmish has many items and they likely don't have any abilities maxed out. if any player involved would have bought a different item or chosen a different skill to level up it likely would have gone completely differently. if that skirmish had occurred at a later point in the game, when the players had more skills, stats, and items, it would have gone differently
expand that to 5 players on each team, over 100 heroes to choose from, each very distinct and different from one another (no shoto-type differences here), 25 levels of stat gains and skill builds, plus the 70 or so items, of which each hero can have 6 of at one time. here is a list of the items in dota: http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Items
some of those items increase stats, or add additional abilities to the hero, or provide buffs and debuffs in an aoe around the hero. some of them grant temporary invulnerability, or increased health regeneration, or increased armor and magic resistance
it's fairly obvious that the potential for different interactions in dota is almost limitless. that's why people play it. for all intents and purposes there is no ceiling, no skill cap that anyone can feasibly reach. when you play a moba you are constantly learning about game mechanics, how different heroes complement and counter each other, how different types of players work with or against you. every match is different. every match is a learning experience
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