The lights are on
According to a recent Game Informer poll, about 30 percent of responders had no interest in MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arenas). Another 30 percent didn’t even know what a MOBA was, and only 10 percent of you played MOBAs regularly.
Last weekend, The International Dota 2 Championships drew in a record 4.5 million unique viewers on Twitch and culminated with winning team Alliance taking home $1.4 million of a $2.8 million pot — the largest in eSports history. My question to you is: why the disparity?
Until this year, I had no experience with MOBAs. I have gaps in my gaming knowledge, but rarely do I know nothing about an entire genre. I began playing Dota 2 with four friends and was immediately hooked by its unbending reliance on teamwork and communication. Unlike in Call of Duty, one bad apple really can spoil the whole bunch.
This isn’t a campaign to get everyone invested in Dota 2 or League of Legends; people play what they like, and that’s great. But what’s holding you back from giving MOBAs a try? Some of the best ones are free to play, and not in an exploitative way. For those without a gaming PC, there are great console options like Awesomenauts or Monday Night Combat that offer twists on the genre.
If you already decided to dive in, what convinced you to take the plunge? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Update: For those asking, a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) is a subset of the real-time strategy genre in which players control one hero instead of an army of units. Using teamwork and hero skills, players push up a series of lanes lined with turrets and weak non-player characters until they reach and destroy the enemy's base. There are, of course, many variants across different games. Adam's review of Dota 2 goes into more detail.
i don't know a single friend of mine who has ever played a MOBA, and i generally only play multi-player with friends.
I thought the main reason was the notoriously rude player community. That's what helped drive me from CoD to Battlefield (apart from cheaters, glitchers, and STALE gameplay)
This about sums it up for me: "unbending reliance on teamwork and communication." I don't have any friends who play games like these regularly and I have a trust issue when it comes to chatting with random internet creeps. Even outside of DOTA 2, I just can't get into completely multi-player games. Something about that sort of environment turns me off. Maybe it's the constant pressure of other people needing you to work faster, or the embarrassment of not knowing critical information that seems obvious to everyone else. I like to learn and enjoy games at my own pace.
It's the commitment factor for me mostly. I almost always finish games I start. The thing that most often keeps me from finishing a game is an uninteresting story. I like to experience as many games and stories as I can, so committing to a game with no real storyline and endless repetition just isn't my thing. (The one and only game I spent over 100 hours in online multi-player was Battlefield Bad Company 2).
I've played DOTA2 and I didn't care for it. Classic MOBAs (Dota, LoL, etc) just aren'tmy slice of pie. Not enough action and too boring for my taste. I don't understand how so many people could be invested in it as well, but I don't have to. Maybe I'll give them a try later down the line but for now I have much more entertaining games to play.
For me personally, It is not a lack of experience or time, but a lack of interest. Even playing Warcraft 3 back in 2003 I had zero interest in the mod. The format just doesn't hold my attention. It is downright boring when I play. But that's just my taste.
I would play these games if they weren't made so simple. I always get bored playing MOBA's I just go back to what it was based off of and play a real RTS where you need actual strategy. Likewise with COD, I hate it not for being part of the in crowd of hating, but the fact that I have never had fun playing such a slow paced game, I can't wait for another real DOOM game or even a Quake or Unreal to come out.
I would say my competitiveness in gaming sometimes makes me stop playing MOBAs- for instance I've taken a break from Dota2 and decided to play LoL for a bit. 20 losses in a row just made me mad, basically. Though I enjoy Dota 2 more when I'm winning, the matchmaking system seems to always WANT me to end up with a net loss- 10 win streak then 20? It's just fishy. Though I must admit... I do really enjoy playing the heroes in Dota 2 so much more and I like the mechanics more in general over LoL- though not by a significant margin.
I'm not much of a social gamer. My gaming habits revolve around unwinding and relaxing. My social life is more in line with going out, playing sports, hanging out, and talking. I find that gaming against other people isn't especially relaxing. Not to mention that I don't exactly like steep learning curves.
I don't play them as I don't know what they are. Well I may know but I just don't have time. I have enough stuff to waste my time than to sink time that I don't have into a MOBA. I mean sure they are popular but in the end. I dislike PvP as there is always that chance that a game that should be fair but the other guy is cheating. I have been burned too many times to go back into them.
Because a specific type of gamer and personality plays them, and I don't get along with either.
1. Learning curve is too high. seriously. I don't mind putting in hours to learn characters and their strengths/weaknesses, but what is up with the item shops? they make next to zero sense.
2. Community is usually full of some of the meanest jerks online. Period.
3. Controls. Isometric games have been shown to work on game pad controllers. I don't see why a MOBA can't be mapped to a game pad. I can't play point and click games for hours like that before my hands/fingers get so, so tired.
Too damn repetitive.
Three reasons: I don't really have the time and when I do have time I spend it playing console games. They just don't look fun to me, and I'm usually confused at what I'm looking at on the screen. I don't like playing games on Pc.
i dont play mobas because i like to control massive armies not just one dude
The experience required to play effectively, coupled with the fact that a high percentage of MOBA players are, by necessity, unfriendly towards new players, has basically turned me off to playing MOBAs.
Meh, it really just wasn't my cup of tea. A bunch of my friends tried to get me into League of Legends, but the game never clicked with me. I didn't like the champion system since it almost ensured that certain champions would win, and I hated feeling like if the other team automatically had this guy and this guy and this guy we were at a disadvantage. Plus, at the end of the day, I just didn't have fun while playing them. Really, this was more of a LoL rant rather than MOBAs, but once your first game in a genre is bad, it's hard to bounce back into it.