WEEK 10: MOBA/ARTS games

MOBA, which stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, also called ARTS(action real-time strategy) by Valve Corporation, games are relatively new type of games. First games of this type were just mods to popular strategies like StarCraft with his mode Aeon of Strife and Warcraft3 with Defense Of The Ancients mode. In this type of games players are divided into two teams that fight against each other on the arena. Players in MOBA games types fight using their own personal character called heroes or champions – depending on the game. Characters got set of 3 separate attributes called strength, agility and intelligence. Heroes in ARTS are divided into groups on the base of their main attribute or on the role that character will have to “play” during the game. Players power up their champions by getting levels and buying items. Every item it useful on some heroes and useless on the other depending on the strategy player uses his hero. Each character has skills witch number is, depending on the hero, from four up to seven. Every hero has its own personal skill that is called ultimate. Skills are divided into active and passive. Active skills need mana to activate and sometimes a target, while passive works no matter what. Game ends when one team destroys ancient building of the opponent. At this moment the most popular MOBA games are League of Legends and DOTA2. I know not everyone know the terminology used so I will put a little cheat sheet at the bottom of the article.

Map

At the begging map is divided into 2 hales, like 2 teams. Each team has its own base. Territory of both teams is separated with a river. In MOBA games we usually consider 3 standard lanes: top lane, mid lane and bottom lane. Every lane is used by the creeps that spawns in barracks in each base. Each lane has 3 towers that must be destroyed in order to destroy opponents barracks. It is needed before you will be able to attack ancient. In between lanes there is a forest. In forest we can find neutral creeps that spawns every minute in places called camps.

Earning money

In order to buy items characters need money. It can be acquired by killing creeps. Creep is considered as killed by hero only when hero what the last one to deal damage. Killing creeps can occur in lanes, when champion can kill enemy creeps, or in the jungle where player is killing neutral creeps. Of course heroes get money from killing enemy heroes or destroying lane towers. Gold earned can be spend on items but in some games player loses part of his gold when he dies.

Game Stages

We divide whole game time to 3 stages. Those stages are:

1.    Early game – first part of the game, also sometimes called laning stage. Hero take trying to get as much as possible gold from lanes and not die.

2.    Mid game – phase of the same when core heroes starting getting their first items. Very active phase, most of kills happens in that stage. Also many ganks used to happen it that stage.

3.    Late game – usually starts after about 40 minutes of game so many games never enters that stage. Most often this stage is won by the champions that had most farm by the whole game time and was able to buy some expensive and good items.

Hero role

We divide characters by them role in game on:

-       Carry – hero no very active until late game stage. Tries to farm as much as possible and avoid ganks. Easy to kill in early game and very deadly in late game.

-       Support – character that helps team, by healing, buying wards, providing mana and sometimes dies so that carry can escape safely. Often offers supporting skills like stuns, silences or other disables.

-       Jungler – champion that is available to use jungle efficient in the early game, in order to get gold and levels, leaving more farm and experience to the hero on lane.

-       DPS – hero that is desired to deal damage. Usually not very survivable, that’s the reason those type of heroes usually buys items with LL.

-       Offlane – character designed to stand alive solo against one or more heroes in the laning stage.

-       Mid – hero designed for 1 vs. 1 battle which usually takes part in mid lane.

-       Ganker – character that has skills which help him to attack form long distance, being invisible or with very good mobility over the map. Usually those type of heroes get MS items to chase and kill.

-       Tank – champion developed to stay alive as long as possible. Often used as bait, because if opponent will use his skill with long cooldown he won’t be able to use it later on.

-       Pusher – created to easily destroy towers in early game, usually by summoning some creeps or by taking control over neutral creeps from the jungle.

Heroes usually have more than one role or can easily change its role as the game progresses to the next stage.

Cheat Sheet

·         Stun – Ability that prevents opponent form moving or using any ability or item.

·         Silence – Ability that prevents from using ability.

·         DPS – Damage per second. No further explanations needed.

·         MS – Moving speed. Speed of our hero, very useful when chasing or running.

·         AS – Attack speed. Number of attacks per second of our character.

·         LL – life leach. Percentage of hitpoints drained from enemy unit with each hit.

·         Farm – hero concentrate on fast earning gold in order to buy items as soon as possible.

·         Gank – stack “by surprise”

My favorite ARTS game is DOTA2.

Have you ever played any of this type game? Did u like it? What you like in MOBA games? If you will ever play in that kind of game what role suit you the most and why?