MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games are currently one of the most popular genres of online multiplayer games out there. The MOBA genre, however, is rather famous for its high barrier of entry - MOBAs are not for everyone. Even my own co-author and good friend Jack does not see the value in them at all. That said, with a wealth of options out there for anyone looking to give them a try, I believe there is a MOBA for almost anyone. That does pose the question, though: which MOBA is right for you?
What is a MOBA game?
First it is important to understand just what is common to all MOBA games. A MOBA game is a 5v5 team game where each team, with one character controlled by each player, attempts to destroy the other team’s base to win. Defending each team’s base is a series of structures known as towers or turrets which thwart attempts to simply run up and destroy the base by individual players, and helping each team are spawning waves of minions/creeps that continuously push forward to try and help kill the enemy base. Players can make their character more powerful by killing these small minions/creeps, neutral monsters, or other players to gain experience and level up, as well as gain gold which can be spent on items that help the players achieve victory.
There are some design elements common to each MOBA game which are differently emphasized or de-emphasized depending on the game, and I will be using these elements to try and make clear what separates the “big three” (Dota 2, League of Legends, and Heroes of the Storm). These elements are:
- Average game length/time commitment
- Burden of knowledge
- Individual influence
- Team play
- Design philosophy
MOBAs are an insanely complex genre and this by no means covers everything, but for a prospective player of a MOBA game these are what I believe to be the most important factors.
Dota 2 is the sequel to the original “MOBA” game, Defense of the Ancients, a mod for the Blizzard game Warcraft III. It keeps the core gameplay of the original intact while being overall modernized in appearance.
Dota 2 is the most complex of any MOBA game on the market. As such, it has the greatest burden of knowledge. To define that term, burden of knowledge refers to any game mechanic that you must know the functionality of in order to play with or against it. An infamous example is Dota’s own Bloodseeker - his ultimate ability, Rupture, deals massive damage to someone if they move after Bloodseeker has cast it on them. Normally, players instinctively run away from a source of threat, especially when taking damage. This only makes Rupture do more damage, and very often new players die because they run away from Bloodseeker instead of standing and fighting or using teleport abilities to escape without taking damage from Rupture. Dota 2’s burden of knowledge is very massive and few heroes’ abilities’ full effects are obvious when used against you. Some newcomers to Dota may get frustrated by the seemingly arbitrary difficulty level of the game and they may also see it as cheap when they die to things they cannot perceive at first. For others though, this means that there is always something new to learn about the game and makes the skill ceiling of the game higher. And, just like most difficult games, there exists a wealth of resources available to help newcomers learn the game - even down to hero guides that tell you what to do every step of the way in-game.
Every MOBA game involves a time commitment, and Dota 2 is no exception. Each match length is on average 37 minutes, the highest of the big three. It has been my personal experience that a lot of Dota matches, when close, tend to run on for at least 50 minutes, and since there is no way of conceding the match early players will often fight to the bitter end. From a metagame time commitment standpoint, all of Dota 2’s investment comes from game knowledge and experience - a first time player of Dota 2 immediately has access to all heroes and everything available to even the most highly skilled player, making raw skill the only difference between two players of Dota 2.
Dota 2’s design philosophy is unique compared to the other two MOBAs I will talk about. Dota 2’s heroes often possess abilities with immense power and utility but with expensive resource costs or high cooldowns. In addition, since Dota 2 does not trouble itself with being easily approachable, many of the heroes can be extremely unique and difficult to play but very rewarding once mastered, such as the hero Invoker who can cast up to fourteen abilities if a player knows how to mix and match his spells correctly. Due to the extreme strength of each Dota 2 hero, counterpick relationships between heroes are very much magnified compared to other MOBAs, which can be less fun if you like playing a very niche hero with a lot of bad matchups.
Because of its design philosophy, Dota 2 also has a lot of opportunities for a player’s individual skill to shine. If a player can manage to get very ahead of his opponents, the extreme power of most heroes’ kits coupled with the very strong power advantage they get from killing other players can let a single hero carry his team to victory. Because of the strength of hero abilities though, team play is still very strong in Dota 2 and a coordinated team can outplay the other team to come back from a disadvantage if they use their abilities with great synergy. The advantage of one player on a team can be quickly nullified if the other team strings their abilities in such a way as to never allow that player to do damage or get to anything.
My verdict is that if you want a deeply complex and strategic MOBA that doesn’t hold your hand but also doesn’t fetter you with any grinding systems, Dota 2 is the game for you. For someone unconcerned with the learning curve of their games, Dota 2 is hugely rewarding and can be played for years without getting boring.
The second of the big three and my personal favorite is League of Legends.
Riot Games, the company behind LoL, has a differing stance behind the concepts of burden of knowledge and counterplay compared to Dota 2. Riot is very openly against the idea of having burden of knowledge limit a new player’s ability to play the game, considering it unfun game design. That’s not to say that LoL has no burden of knowledge, but compared to most Dota 2 heroes it is very often obvious what LoL champions can do if you simply observe them in play. Generally, in LoL if you avoid a threat by running away from it successfully, you won’t die. Most abilities in LoL are designed so that you can either dodge them or buy an item that allows you to deal with it.
On a per-match basis, LoL has a lower time commitment than Dota 2. On average a game of LoL lasts 33 minutes, and additionally teams that are severely behind can vote to surrender the game at 20 minutes to avoid the frustration of a drawn out loss. A game can be drawn out up to about an hour, sometimes longer in very low-level play, but most longer games end by 45 minutes.
The general design philosophy of LoL is also markedly different from that of Dota 2. A LoL champion’s abilities are quite underpowered compared to most Dota 2 heroes’ abilities. However, the cost of using a LoL ability and the resulting cooldown is very often much lower, meaning players can use their abilities more often to fight their opponents and get to experience their champion’s powers a lot. There are even champions in LoL with alternate resource systems, or no resource system at all, a foreign concept in Dota. LoL champions are often very mobile compared to Dota 2 heroes, and a lot of abilities are aimable (and can thus miss if aimed poorly) whereas most of Dota 2’s abilities are point-and-click or placed with a generous area of effect. Overall, the combination of “skillshot” abilities with high mobility and forgiving resource systems creates a very fast-paced, almost “spammy” gameplay flow with an emphasis on dodging abilities and making cool plays. To some, this can seem overly “casual” with few consequences for using your champion’s abilities frivolously. To others, this can be a liberating breakaway from Dota 2’s slower, more plodding style of resource management where one must make every ability count.
As an individual player in LoL, you have a lot of ability to make an impact on the match by playing well. However, Compared to Dota 2, in LoL it is less likely for a skilled player to carry his team single-handedly if the rest of his team is doing poorly - he will to a certain extent always be dependent on his teammates to enable him to succeed. Riot has been balancing the game steadily against “snowball” situations for years now, and so if your team is generally behind it can be hard to win through sheer individual power since your opponents have a lot of recourse available to them to prevent a single champion on the enemy team from getting out of hand. It’s still very possible to solo carry, it’s just significantly less viable as a strategy than it used to be barring an extreme skill imbalance.
Team play is still quite important in LoL. At a very high level, coordination is usually king and teams live and die by their ability to cooperate. Low level games are extremely disorganized though and generally favor players who can thrive in chaos by creating a personal advantage and trying to brute force their way to victory.
LoL has a very tedious grind system behind it which in my opinion is one of the worst aspects of the entire game. In LoL, accounts progress from level 1 to 30, unlocking a slot of “masteries” every level which make your champion more powerful. Right from the get go this can create power imbalances in low level games where a higher level player can win through statistical advantage granted from masteries. It doesn’t end there though. From the beginning, an account only has access to a handful of weekly free champions. After each game, you earn Influence Points which let you purchase new champions. This would be all fine and dandy, but LoL also has another pregame stat customization system called Runes. Runes are cool once you have them and allow you to do interesting builds as well as tailor your champion to your playstyle. However, in order to get runes you need to spend Influence Points, and they cost a lot.
To put it into perspective, you earn somewhere around 80 Influence Points per LoL game if you win, and you get a bit less if you lose. A full rune page can cost many thousands of IP, so for a single rune page you’re looking at a bit over a hundred games. But, it isn’t enough to have just one rune page - you need at least a few different kinds to cover the different kinds of champions you will play. If you want to do this, to get a small statistical upgrade to your champions that’s necessary in order to be on an even playing field with other players who have gone through with this and bought runes, you have to put off buying champions (which can themselves take a lot of games to unlock, the most expensive ones taking about 60 games to save up for). Buying champions is at least fun, like getting a new toy - buying runes though, just feels like a chore.
This all means that if you ever want to have all of the runes and champions in League of Legends for free, you need to play for a long ass time. I have been playing League of Legends for over four years and I have several thousands games logged. I am only now getting close to owning every champion in the game, and I probably own only about half of the runes in the game (though that’s still most of the best ones). It does create a sort of exciting sense of progression when you’ve saved up for that champion you’ve really been itching to get, and the likely reason for all this is that it earns Riot money from impatient players, but from a standpoint of competitive integrity the League of Legends experience and rune systems are the absolute biggest hindrance to enjoyment of the game for newcomers to the game who are serious about competing. It can mostly be bypassed by spending money, but if you want literally everything in the game unlocked from the start then you will have to pay a lot more than any retail AAA game.
I hope I didn’t let my soap box discourage you from playing LoL though. When I love something, I scrutinize it mercilessly; LoL is still my favorite game and in my opinion has the most fun gameplay with the right mix of everything. If you are looking for a MOBA that is approachable yet deep, fast-paced and action-oriented, and don’t mind a bit of grind while you learn the game, League of Legends is the best MOBA for you.
The final MOBA I will discuss is Heroes of the Storm. HotS is Blizzard’s offering to the MOBA genre, and is, to put it simply, on the other end of the spectrum compared to Dota 2. Blizzard is very good at creating streamlined interpretations of classic genres, having found success at TCGs with Hearthstone and having made several very robust RTS games. If I had to describe it in a single sentence, HotS is the gameplay formula of Dota 2 with almost all the frills trimmed off, leaving players with the bare essentials and their skill as a team to determine victory or defeat.
HotS is the simplest MOBA game to play and understand, period. There is no gold or itemization, instead having a simple set of talent trees available for each hero and obviating the need to tediously farm enemy creeps or minions in order to get more powerful. Abilities are fairly straightforward with some cases of burden of knowledge coming through. HotS is a relatively young game, and so it just has fewer heroes than LoL or Dota 2, making it easier to grasp the hero pool as a whole and to understand the metagame of HotS.
Of any MOBA, HotS has the lowest average match time at around 20 minutes. There is no surrender system, but very often I found that bad games would end quickly and I wouldn’t really mind losing. HotS unfortunately does have its own grind system, but at least has no analogue to LoL’s runes and masteries. All of the grind is focused on earning gold to buy heroes, but compared to LoL saving up to buy a hero in HotS is a larger time commitment so it isn’t really much better. The most expensive champions in LoL are 6300 Influence Points - the most expensive heroes in HotS are 10,000 gold, and once your gold rewards from leveling up and doing your daily quests run out you make only 30 gold per win.
The way HotS is designed makes the game far more about teamwork than about individual play. When I began playing HotS, it was easy for me to pick a mobile assassin character like Zeratul and get my team very far ahead by punishing positional errors and generally just flying solo, abusing my prior knowledge of how to play MOBA games. Once the game began to match me against more experienced players though, they caught onto my bullshit really fast and made me far less effective by working together to counter me. At low levels you can still sort of solo carry, and there is a particular “specialist” class of heroes that often have individualist playstyles, but at high levels you work with your team or you lose, and even the most toxic players I ran into understood the value of team play.
The design philosophy of HotS leans more towards the LoL school of thought. Abilities are easier to spam, are generally of moderate power, and a lot of heroes are quite mobile. There is a good variety of heroes to play despite the small-ish roster, and there is a clear division in role that Blizzard is going for when designing heroes (Assassins do damage, Warriors tank things, Supports have utility and heals, etc.) The power level is overall a little higher than LoL, but the prevalence of healing abilities in HotS can make fights last a long time.
The other most unique thing about HotS though, is the variety of maps the game offers. Dota 2 and LoL offer their core gameplay experience on one map each, and though they have custom maps and alternate map/game modes respectively, the game is designed and balanced around the main map. HotS instead has a slew of maps that all revolve around a map-specific mechanic that, if exploited by a team, give that team an advantage and help them win. I found a lot of the map mechanics gimmicky and derivative (a boring amount of them involve simply getting a giant monster on your side to help you push down the enemy’s structures), but some of them are really cool such as Battlefield of Eternity with a very skirmish-focused, open map design or Haunted Mines with a two-tiered “underground” map design.
Overall, HotS is a very good introduction to the MOBA genre, not bothering with unintuitive systems core to Dota 2 and LoL and focusing only on straight up fighting the other guys and winning by using your character well with your teammates. I would also highly recommend it as a side game for veterans of other MOBAs to play if they feel like they need a break from their main game of choice. For the working gamer with a wife and kids, the short and sweet match length is definitely a huge plus.
MOBAs as a whole
MOBAs are a strange breed of game. They bring out the worst in people, or they can make people work together. They’re arbitrary, and yet they make sense. They can make you feel like an unstoppable god, or they can make you feel thoroughly disempowered. The fact is, I had never been able to put more than a few hundred hours into any game before I was introduced to League of Legends, and now I can’t see myself stopping in the foreseeable future even after four years. If you like MOBAs, I highly encourage you to try every single MOBA you can get your hands on - if you have any love for the genre, you’ll find something you can really sink your teeth into, and you’ll never look back.
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