I just noticed this new Forum Category and thought to begin a thread about Open-World MOBA Game Design. I think this is a brand new idea, and so far I seem to be the first to be designing and developing such a Game.
While being the first to come up with the idea of an Open-World MOBA style game sounds exciting, it’s also very scary because that means I’m all alone out here experimenting and hoping it all works out for the best with my upcoming title “Heroes of Rune”.
The initial idea of an Open-World MOBA was inspired by MMORPG and MOBAs. I personally always enjoyed MMORPGs but these days I have very little time to commit to an MMO, then I discovered MOBAs. I have since began designing a game that merges the third-person experience of an MMO Open World into a MOBA style game. If you review my game’s thread above, I think you can get a pretty good idea of how I plan to do this.
Although this seems like a cross-promotion for my game Heroes of Rune, I’m actually very curious about how many other Unity Developers are interested in designing a similar kind of game, or possibly already have one in development. I’m interested in getting some feedback of coarse regarding the design of my game Heroes of Rune, and discussing other possibilities of what an Open-World MOBA could be.
If you have an Open-World MOBA in the works, have any feedback or questions about my approach, or ideas about such a Game lets talk chat about it.
I do have questions about your approach, on a fundamental level (as in, “I’m interested”, not “I’m being critical.”)
Open-World and MOBAs to my perspective have really two different focuses. Open World games are fun because they cater to exploration. MOBAs on the other hand are cool because, despite being constrained environments that serve as an Arena, in part they set up opportunities for clutch ‘counter-plays’ and incomplete information problems (is the jungler counter-jungling in our stretch of the jungle? Are they at their red buff?), which comes off to me as more of a chance to express a ‘Killer’ mentality (which, I dislike the name, because a Spade-type player enjoys interfering in other players’ experience - these are the guys who hunt glitches to brick auction houses in MMO, they don’t just gank newbies.)
The problem is as above, though. If you’ve got a large open world that’s ripe for exploration, chances are good that the ‘play timer’ is much too long; this might be me mentally imposing The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim onto League of Legends’ mechanics, but if it takes 10 minutes to reach a place that was under attack is already taken and the enemy has since moved on to another target. This is bad for all involved because they can’t react as quickly (if they can’t teleport on a frequent basis), but also because the defender’s advantage is huge (the attackers will take 10 minutes at least to stage another assault.)
How are you planning to get around these problems? The only thing I can reason is you’re going to have to find ways to constrain your open world to be conduicive to the arena gameplay.
Wha… eh… open world arena? Huh? How is this not just an MMORPG? I don’t really want to deflate your marketing pitch, but I’m not really seeing how it’s anything but an MMO with a not uncommon PvP system.
It seems like your asking in summary “how the hell is an Open-World MOBA even possible?” LOL! well yes, I think the first thing that comes to mind when we think Open-World, we think huge world to explore. In my case, No I don’t have nor plan to have a huge Open-World environment. In Heroes of Rune, Players can Reach the Opposing Team’s Base on the other side of the Map in under 30 Seconds. So with that in mind, the Map is not massive, it’s also not very small either, it’s between a small scale to medium sized map I think. While I did say Map, the Map is Considered Open-World because I am not restricting Players to Travel Down Lanes, or Confined Jungle Areas… the Map is Totally Open!
While designing an Open-World MOBA Game like this, I could not keep the MOBA Tradition of Towers or Spawning Minions for Pushing Lanes as there where no Lanes or Towers for Minions to Attack! I did something interesting…
I borrowed some elements of a Gameplay Mode called Onslaught from Unreal Tournament 2003. In UT2K3 Onslaught 2 Teams would Fight to Control the Map by Capturing Nodes, if one Team Captured 3 or 4 Nodes that Linked to the Opposing Teams Base, you can then Siege the Base, if the Base is Destroyed the Team Wins or Lose.
In Heroes of Rune we use Rune Gates, where an Opposing Team needs to Capture 3 out of 5 Gates before the Enemy Ancient is Open for Attack. Although the Ancient will be Pretty Powerful, so Players will be Forced to Roam the Environment Searching for Mobs or Other Players to Kill to Earn Exp and Gold. Players Level Up, Purchase Items, Buffs, Upgrade their Skills, and Best of All Players Get to Spawn their Own Minion at a Rune Gate Owned by their Team. Players can bring those Minions into Battle to Fight against other Players or Mobs. I think between all of this, there might be enough going on to keep the gameplay very fun and dynamic, at least that’s my hope!
I also few other features that will be unique… I plan to leave out the Time Waiting for Player Match Ups based on what Heroes you Select. It’s going be a little challenging, but I think it’s possible to balance out the Hero Characters where It doesn’t matter what Hero you select, and you can instantly Join any Game in Progress, or Start a New Game Instantly. You will just need at least one opposing Player to Join the Game then the Game will begin… similar to how FPS Matchups work.
Finally, we have a Quest Mode that allows Players to Relax, Play Coop, Decide when to PvP or Not, Explore, Fight Monsters, and Raid Bosses… overall it will feel like a very Lite-MMO. Everything the Player accomplish in this Play Mode will not be in vain as they can earn Account Level Battle Points that Bump them Up the Leaderboard Ranks slightly, and when earning enough Battle Points you can Unlock additional Heroes or Skins.
That’s the gist of what I have planned for this Game…
Well it’s NOT an MMO at all… it’s a MOBA all around, but taking some elements out from the Traditional MOBA Design, and merging in MMORPG third-person perspective, Open World environment/map (not huge environment), RPG elements of coarse, along with adding in a twist of new gameplay modes to bring it all together.
huh? lol… im confused… are you saying Open-World MOBA = MMORPG? Are you sure about that…? lol…
Last I checked 3 vs 3, or 6 players per a Game Session is not considered an MMO… I’m not even talking about a persistent world here… Persistent World is one of the main features of an MMORPG which Open-World MOBA, or MOBA does not have…
So on the scale of worlds/maps, are we talking Skyrim, ARMA, Battlefield, or just barely bigger than a CoD level? Now I’m more thinking you’ve basically butchered the term ‘open world’ to just mean large maps.
I will need to check out this Arathi Basin, is there a way for me to quickly gain access to this Battleground without going through much of the game lol? I just want to see what it’s like since you mentioned it.
Trial account, Lv.10. Have fun with that. Alternatively, you could play Star Wars: The Old Republic (it’s F2P), and you could fight Alderaan Civil War (also at Lv.10), it’s much the same just on a smaller scale. For what you’re thinking, AB is a better 5-node, ‘large-scale’ example, while ACW is a good small 3-node example of the game mode.
@jonkuze - First of all, I followed the link and your game looks really promising. I love the solid style that run through everything I saw in the video.
On the other hand, you are not receiving the response you expected because you have misunderstood some stuff.
Open World - Is a term used for a game that doesn’t lock you to one or a few predefined paths. Most MOBA:s that I have tried fit this description because the lanes doesn’t lock your movement, they only guide you but some games allow you to head into the “forest” and others allow you to carve new paths. Lots of modern games are open world but it is typically used to market games where the feature is more prominent like GTA.
Third-Person Perspective - There is no “MMORPG third-person perspective”, it is simply called third-person perspective and it means that you control one or more characters from a distance. This can be over the shoulder like in Mass Effect or from a greater distance that give you a better view of the surroundings like in most RPG games. The next step is called “God Perspective” when you manage a city, civilization or similar.
MOBA - Is an abbreviation of Multiplayer online battle arena and the original idea was that they took a PvP map from a MMORPG and adapted it to a game of its own without the MMO part. Basically, that makes a MOBA a PvP focused Multiplayer RPG to be exact but it turned into its own genre due to its immense popularity… and it is easier to pronounce then PvP Multiplayer RPG…
MMO & Multiplayer - There is no clear definition between MMO and Multiplayer in the games industry but most people call a game with 2 to 64 players a multiplayer game and tend to start calling games with more then 65 to 128 players a mmo but that is a gray zone. Typically, most industry veterans tend to agree that a game that supports 150 or more players are a real MMO but some people even set the bar at a minimum of 500 simultaneous players.
The problem is that your OP sounds like a marketing person that had to much coffee. From what I can tell, your game is definitely a MOBA, very close to the original concept with some minor twists and nice graphics.
Na there is no Butchering… Large Maps are Large Maps… in FPS Games we could probably call Large Maps Open-World because you can go wherever you want in the Map and Decide if you Want to Kill People or Not, or Just sit there and let your Team Lose lol… You have that Choice which is Part of what Defines an Open World Gaming Experience. Although when we think Open-World we generally tend to think Grand Theft Auto or MMORPG because they are the Games that happen to make use of the term Open-World more often than any other Genre.
It’s all a matter of perspective… Open World according to Wikipedia is defined as the following:
For me the Key Words are Roam-Freely and Considerable Freedom to Choose how or when to Approach Objectives.
In my Open-World MOBA idea, Players are not Restricted to Lanes which Traditionally would make a MOBA game abit more Linear as they are designed to Force the Player into Defending or Moving along 1, 2, or 3 Lanes… while my idea is removing this and having no barriers of movement besides where we end the Map on each side. Players also decide how to Play, you can run around Capturing all the Runes Gates in my game, and do little damage to players and ancient and die quickly… or decide how and when to level up, fight other monsters, or just hunt players strickly… there is some degree of freedom within game…
there is also the second gameplay Mode that I am offering which Truly allows the Player to do what they want, when they want… but still it will feel like a MOBA because the map and number of players are not massive…
so yea I may be walking down a fine line, or grey area but I think I have all the right things in place to make the claim of an Open-World MOBA… I mean really it doesn’t even exist so that’s really the Point of this Thread! If I am not defining an Open-World MOBA according to what you may think is or should be defined as an Open-World MOBA then the floor is yours share your thoughts on how to make it possible, or make it better!
Can you explain how this would be any different then, say, Dominion in LoL? Here, you can at any point go for any of the 5 nodes. You can set up jungle ambushes, you can contest the buff in the map center, you can sneak around the map in a stealth character avoiding fights altogether… In the end though, you have a timed objective against another team, which is going to severely restrict what you can do. You can choose HOW to approach that objective, but your ‘free roam’ is not really an option. Neither is your ‘When’. You can attempt to time an attack to coordinate a two-pronged attack against a foe, but you can’t really afford to go explore that mountaintop while the rest of your team attempts to win.
So I guess my question is - what is going to give? Do you hamper your competitive aspect, not really giving teams a set objective and allowing players freedom? (thus no real ‘Battle Arena’).
Also
Simply limiting the mapsize and players doesnt turn it into a MOBA. I need help understanding how just making a map and letting players run around doing whatever is a MOBA.
Honestly I really don’t want to promo my game, I even made a reference to that in the OP. I really am just using my game as an example to base this thread off of because I don’t know of any other MOBA that is considered to be Open World. Or in other words, a MOBA that is played in Third-person perceptive with No Lanes. I don’t know any other way to term a MOBA that does this besides Open-World MOBA. I highly doubt my game is comparable to games like League of Legends or DOTA because I’m not following their Game Design Formula, maybe alittle, but mostly heading in a totally different direction. If I simply called what I am designing a MOBA that will immediately have people thinking to compare it to League of Legends or DOTA, and I honestly am not interested in competing with them at all…
Have you seen what Disney is doing with their IP’s? Infinity, pretty crazy stuff from a kiddy company. When my daughter is older I’m buying “her” that stuff, that way we can chill together without doing mind numbing girly stuff. Also, check out Skylanders. Your game reminds me of these.
I guess since I’m a design snob, I will just tell you that from where I stand I think it looks good and seems interesting, but where does it excel? I understand that it’s a semi unique genre, and haven’t played it obviously, but what does it do that… for example… WoW doesn’t do? I find the idea of a “casual pvp” to be inherently contradictory.
I’m the kind of person you’ll have to deal with, so might as well so it in a nice, controlled environment.
I haven’t played Dominion in LoL but I think I should definitely put that on my to do list, so thanks for mentioning it.
At the end of the day this all comes down to a matter of how we all define what a MOBA is and what Open World is… we can go back and forth all day… I’m not here to promote my game, or defend it rather I wanted to share my idea and perspective of what I considered to be an Open-World MOBA and my definition may not ever be in alignment with some of your ideas of how to define it.
I’m more interested to learning about how you would define or design an Open-World MOBA… maybe my idea might be slightly off, but i’m open to discussing how to make the design of an Open World MOBA Better!
Please note I never stated that scaling a small map and limiting players makes the game a MOBA, i’m saying it will feel like a MOBA and also feel like a lite-MMORPG played from a Third-person perspective.
Again it all comes down to perspective of how we define it all…
Okay the point of the battle arena is for everybody to kill each other so you want to keep them in a relatively small controlled area that encourages them to keep running into each other.
The point of the open world is to give people enough space to spread out so that they might pass other people but for the most part they can go about their business and sort of have the world all to themselves.
Dominion follows the same control points ruleset. Its good, except that Riot made it not matter. Jerks.
As far as a open-world MOBA is concerned, I dont see the existing tropes and rulesets working well in an open-world setup. Lanes exist in LoL for a reason! You may want to fundamentally consider how to make a MOBA coexist with open-world conventions from scratch. As good as extant art is concerned, it might be a better idea to play them, then disregard them and do something radically different. I think you’re breaking new ground.
I’m going to play not-so-negative Nigel here and look at this as a problem that needs solving. I think right now i am reading your pitch as a mashup of buzzwords with no direction behind it, but maybe I can try to get to the core of what you are thinking.
First off, I did want to point out that Third person MOBA has been done - look up SMITE. That might give you the atmosphere you are seeking.
Ultimately, it seems like you want a MOBA with more freedom, correct? I still think ‘open world MOBA’ is a bad term for it, but lets explore the idea. The reason that players in LoL/ DoTA stick to their lanes so well is that it has become the most efficient way to secure objectives - gain money, push lanes, deny your opponent. If we want to allow the player more freedom, why not lighten the objectives - at least initially. What if hard objectives did not become an issue until well into the game - 15, 20 minutes? We make the map bigger, and we allow, essentially, an expanded jungle with many more miniature objectives - so many that you can pretty easily find something to do if you just look around, and aren’t forced to contest them (Unless you decide your objective is “hunt other players”).
The goal, initially, is just to grow in strength. Battle monsters, seek out treasure, explore the map to gain intel, hunt down other players.
Now, as the game progresses, less and less objectives on the map become available. Certain monster camps will never respawn. That treasure chest you opened on the mountain? That was a one time deal. Slowly your available options are diminished, which means - yes - you need to focus harder on your opponents as objectives. At the same time, perhaps open up larger, important objectives that will become a focal point for battles. Maybe the objectives that open up are a reflection of how players played the game initially. If a ton of treasure was taken from the map, the Dragon awakens from his Den. Slay him for even more treasure. Were there a lot of player deaths? The necromancer, who has been feasting on their souls, reawakens and terrorizes the battlefield. Your decisions on how to play the initial phase of the game have an impact on how the second phase unfolds, enforcing the concept of freedom in playstyle.
Eventually, maybe 30 minutes in, your player forces are strong enough to advance on the home base of the opponent, which previously would have been impossible to assault because of its power. Ultimately, the end goal is to eliminate the enemy base. But the way the game unfolded was largely dependent on how you (and others) decided to play that round - enforcing the concept of flexibility and freedom. Balancing this would be a difficult task, but I can see some potential.
