MOBAholic: A New LoL Season Arrives

These days, it seems like everyone's trying to get in on the multiplayer online battle arena (or MOBA) action. Originally popularized by the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (and StarCraft's Aeon of Strife map before that), this team-versus-team real-time strategy subgenre is quite the hot item in PC gaming. In this regular column, GameSpy writer and MOBA junkie Ryan Scott offers up his insight into this ever-growing field of competitive (and largely free-to-play!) multiplayer PC gaming.


When it comes to online games, one thing is certain: Change is fast, frequent, and oftentimes pretty darned sweeping. The past few weeks have been interesting for two of the biggest MOBAs. League of Legends kicked off its third competitive season amidst a patch that brought numerous balance tweaks and a new divisional player-ranking system, and Heroes of Newerth received a major overhaul designed to improve the quality of life for new players while simultaneously offering old pros some new creative outlets.

Of course, League of Legends players should be used to these giant seasonal patches by now; last year's second season brought a jarring (but ultimately very healthy and necessary) jungle overhaul, summoner spell remakes and removals, completely retooled mastery trees, itemization changes, and a sizable competitive prize purse. Season three sounds similar on paper: more jungle tweaks, more summoner spell reshuffling, retooled mastery trees (again!), and a laundry list of item remakes. At this point, it's really just a refinement of what already works (and a ruthless gutting of what doesn't).

For one, Riot's wholly reverted season two's summoner spell additions. Surge and Promote -- both widely considered sub-worthless in serious Summoner's Rift matches -- have made their welcome exit, with the Barrier spell (a two-second self-shield, previously exclusive to the single-lane Proving Grounds skirmish map) replacing them. All told, I think it's probably a bit of a wash; Barrier is nice for overcautious newbies, but it's never going to supplant a good Flash/Ignite or Flash/Exhaust combo. At least it's got some obvious utility, though -- and that's more than anyone can say for the uniformly terrible Surge spell.


I feel like the mastery tree refresh isn't quite the insane change that season two's remake was. It mostly just reshuffles things -- moving some of the more desirable masteries deeper down (goodbye, first-tier defensive bonuses!), and adding a couple of support-targeted enhancements to the utility tree (gold-on-hit -- hell yeah!). The same overall principles apply to the jungle (the difficulty got an upfront bump, with gold and experience rewards redistributed a bit better among each camp's mobs), and I've already written an entire column on the itemization changes.


But the thing I'm most interested in is the new League System, which overhauls the game's matchmaking and competitive ranking system -- and steals some pages straight from StarCraft II in the process. The clunky old ELO ranking system is no more; after a series of placement matches, you're dropped into a 250-man league within a division appropriate to your skill level (so you might get placed in, say, the Silver II division). League points are won and lost in place of ELO, and every 100 League points you accumulate give you the opportunity to move up to the next division (from Silver II, to Silver I, to Gold VI, and so on). In practice, the League System accomplishes the same thing as the preceding ladder system; it just makes your place in the overall competitive ecosystem seem a bit more well-defined, and gives you slightly more tangible goals to chase. Plus, it just makes more intuitive sense -- you know, calling it a "league" and all.


On the flip side, League of Legends' most tenured competitor, Heroes of Newerth, just had its second major relaunch. Now, this is a game that's spent the entirety of its existence living in League of Legends' shadow -- while League's blown up into a modern definition (and shining example) of what a competitive real-time strategy game is, Newerth's the scrappy underdog, fighting for its fraction of that recognition.



While Heroes of Newerth may not be the game that gets all the attention, its 3.0 update (which went live at the end of January) definitely makes it worth another look. Its comprehensive visual upgrade is the most striking and immediate change: The Legion and Hellbourne bases now sit atop like-themed ends of the map, with the Legion's lush, colorful surroundings gradually transforming into a barren, lava-choked, Hellbourne-controlled wasteland. Several of the game's oldest heroes get makeovers as well, bringing them up to par with the dynamic designs of more recent characters. Yes, it's all cosmetic -- but it makes a big difference in the game's overall feel.

A lot of other quality-of-life changes seem aimed toward achieving some level of parity with League of Legends' recent strides. The Learnatorium (yes, that's what it's called) features in-client tutorial videos, while a new walkthrough mode holds first-time players' hands as they dive into their first match. And the new reporting system flags problem players for potential corrective action. I was a bit disappointed to learn that HoN developer S2 Games opted against going all-out with a player-policed peer review system (something that seems to be working very well for League of Legends), but in this genre -- which is about as toxic as you can get in an online game -- any sort of jerkass-player-flagging system is a good call.


Here's the really interesting new feature, though: S2 Games has opened its bot A.I. up to players, allowing anyone to script bot encounters and share them with other players. It takes some doing to really understand or make good use of this feature -- we're talking about a full-on scripting tool here -- but it could make for some pretty interesting possibilities. Might we eventually see bot-versus-bot tournaments, wherein the better A.I. coder wins? Or expert "teams" that replicate the habits and abilities of pro players? This tool might seem gimmicky at first blush, but I see some interesting potential here (even if it might take some time to realize).

Regardless of which game you prefer, now's a good time to be a MOBA fan. This genre's spent the last three years blowing up bigger than anything else in gaming, and it's poised to become an even bigger deal as developers like Riot and S2 Games continue to refine their games' competitive landscapes. For my part, I'll be out there on League of Legends' Summoner's Rift map, doing my damnedest to break into that sweet top-level Challenger division. Stranger things have happened!


Ryan Scott managed GameSpy's day-to-day editorial operations, until a bout of temporary insanity took him away. Nowadays -- when he's not yelling at someone for forgetting to call mid lane MIA, that is -- you can listen to his weekly ramblings on various podcasts over at Geekbox.net. And if you've never given these MOBA thingamajiggers a try, he thinks League of Legends is an excellent place to start.