Quick question: Why do Apple devices always gets the cool MOBA games? It's a bit unfair to Android don't you think?
Anyway, on the Apple Keynote, developer Super Evil Megacorp has revealed their upcoming MOBA game to Apple devices called Vainglory. If you think this is just an ordinary MOBA for mobile, then think again. It might be the iOS’ equivalent of PC games like League of Legends and Dota 2.
“We really only wanted to go down this road if we felt like the experience was going to be faithful to the core community, and for what the expectations of a real, honest-to-goodness core game would be like,” said co-founder Stephan Sherman, when he and Krul sat down with The Guardian after the event.
“For it to feel like a legitimate MOBA, certain things had to be in place. It had to be a skill game, it had to be fair, it had to have zone defence, and players had to know what their roles were, where to go, and how to interact with their teammates in a way that was useful,” he said.
“It had to be tactically competent: it couldn’t be reduced so far down that you couldn’t have the skill depth and the element of overpowering your opponent mentally, and trapping them.”
Strategy is everything in Vainglory. You must be able to coordinate well with your team and plan a very well designed tactics to beat the opposing team.
“It’s like a box on a stick with a little bit of cheese in it, and you’re trying to get the mouse to come in so you can yank the stick and close it,” said Sherman.
“That mechanic is at the heart of any good competitive game, whether it’s chess, or Counter-Strike, or Street Fighter or Vainglory. Any hardcore game that has stood the test of time has that fundamental mechanic of luring the other player in and trying to trap them. It never gets old.”
Aside from that, the developer promises a solid controls- they boast a 30 millisecond respond time so players will not experience any lags and issues during crucial team clash.
Vainglory is set on a parallel version of the earth, with the backstory including two sleeping gods – one in the heart of earth and another in the heart of the moon – with the former secreting then releasing “halcyon” through geyser-like eruptions on the surface.
The world is split into two kinds of areas: The Calm, with less halcyon eruptions and more stability for humans to live, and The Churn, where the eruptions of “raw god essence – it’s the thing that makes magic work” spell danger.
However, people still venture into The Churn with “vain crystals” to capture the halcyon and take it back to their settlements: and it’s the battles for this – one team always starts with possession of an erupting halcyon well while the other is trying to capture it – that spurs Vainglory’s action.
There’s also tension: what Sherman described as the “ebb and flow” of great MOBA games. “A MOBA at its core is not a brawler: a constant stream of action. It’s 95% about setup,” he said.
“It’s preparation, gauging how good your opponent is at what they’re doing, and laying traps for them and luring them in – or being counter-trapped by them. It’s that mental mind game where you watch things explode into super-intensity. That’s really important.”
The developer also mentioned that one game ln Vainglory can last up to half an hour or more, depending on player ability.
“The amount of time a game takes is long enough that players get an emotional investment in the game, but short enough that the action feels a lot more tightly packed than you see in a lot of the more common MOBAS,” he said.
“It’s about having the things you talk about after the game is done. If the game is too short, you won’t have them. If the game is too long, everyone gets bored,” added Krul.
“We’ve worked towards an optimal point where the game can still be fun to jump into and play for a bit, and doesn’t require the hour-plus investment that something like League of Legends of Dota 2 takes, but it’s still long enough that you have those four, five, six or seven encounters during the game, and you talk about them later.”
Vainglory will be a free-to-play game that makes its money from in-app purchases: a model that has been relatively uncontroversial for PC games like Dota 2 and League of Legends, but has provoked more debate among its target demographic of core players on mobile.
“Our game is not pay-to-win. There’s a temptation there on mobile, because it seems like an easy win – a way to get cash, but in a competitive game that cuts your knees out from under you. And even if it didn’t, it just doesn’t fit with the DNA of our company,” said Sherman.
“We like spending a lot of time to think of ways that feel engaging and fun and fair to players, when we think about how monetisation works.”
That means no use of “energy” mechanics, where players have a certain amount of energy that runs out through playing, and then makes them either wait to play again, or spend virtual currency to remove that wait.
“We’re not going to have energy mechanics. That stuff is just horrible. I believe that in some ways, it’s bad for the platform,” said Krul.
“We spend a lot of time thinking about positive reinforcement mechanics rather than negative ones. Rather than removing a frustration by paying, you’re complementing the play experience by paying, but not in a way that’s pay-to-win,” added Sherman.
“We have a couple of really interesting ideas on that front, but we can’t share them yet. It’s not pay-to-win, and it’s going to be fun, engaging and fair.
Vainglory is being tested in a few countries in Asia, but its full global launch will start in October. Krul warned that it will be a slow rollout from country to country, though.