Will MOBAs be the dominant game genre of the 2010s era? - Games

[B]Will MOBAs be the dominant game genre of the 2010s era?[/B] MOBAs or [B]Multiplayer Online Battle Arena[/B] is a genre of games that evolved from your standard point and click real time strategy games except instead of controlling large armies, you only control one powerful unit. A typical MOBA gameplay is to destroy the enemy base while defending your own. As of lately, We have been seeing game companies intent to go into MOBA genre games seeing how quickly this genre has become popular thanks to League of Legends and DOTA 2. The fact is that MOBA has been so casualised that a newbie can pick up the game and play with just a few hours of tutorial. I would say the learning difficulty of MOBA is equivalent to Chess but like chess, once you master the basic of MOBAs, you are ready to go. First Person shooter by now have grown stale especially the FPS featuring Modern Military Shooter. People are getting tired of Shooter games that always involve modern military warfare. You may argue that MOBA destroyed what's left of RTS or Real Time Strategy games. Valve once said MOBAs are the "Action Real Time Strategy game" I believe MOBAs will one day within this decade become the dominant game genre while First Person Shooter will enventually lose it's popularity like how platformers have become back in the beginning of the 2000s era. What's not to say that a console MOBA game will overthrow Call of Duty FPS as the popular multiplayer game in the near future one day? MOBAs compare to a traditional RTS can be easily adapted for Consoles if properly implemented. Let's take a look at the most dominant game genre from each era 1980s- arcade space shooter and racing 1990s- Platformers and Fighting games 2000s- First Person Shooter and MMORPG 2010s- MOBA might be a potential dominant game genre of the 2010-ers (Rogue-like open world games like Minecraft, DayZ and Rust would have been considered a potential dominant Genre but not many companies are getting into this genre yet) If you never played a MOBA game, then you ought to try DOTA or League of Legends or Smite and see why people are getting addicted to this kind of genre. Remember, the moment a consolized MOBA game gets mainstream popularity is the moment FPS genre will start dying.

How is this a debate when it's already happening with pretty much every big and small studio jumping on the gun with their own mobas? Jesus even Dead Island is getting a moba.

I feel like MOBAs are never going to be properly "mainstream", because accessibility is always going to be a problem. Even League of Legends which is arguably the most accessible MOBA at the moment has a huge learning curve for anyone unfamiliar with the genre. The survival MMO/sandboxes/something-craft, whatever you want to call them on the other hand are for the most part immediately accessible. It helps that a lot of them use a lot of the same mechanics as other genres from the get go, but there is less of a need for immediate dedication compared to a MOBA. Minecraft you can just play for fifteen minutes on a random day and feel like you accomplished something, in a MOBA a single match alone can take up to over an hour and to actually start to get better and learn the game, you're going to need to play a lot of matches.

I hope to god it doesn't happen. I've tried a couple of MOBAs and found their playerbase to be the single most toxic group of people I've ever bumped into. Makes the dark recesses of the internet look positively docile most days. Annoyingly, though, I forsee it happening. That's where the PC gaming dollar is right now. So that's where a lot of development is going. [editline]10th February 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=BCell;43855353] Remember, the moment a consolized MOBA game gets mainstream popularity is the moment FPS genre will start dying.[/QUOTE] Wrong. Shooters aren't going ANYWHERE. Even if CoD and BF die off overnight thanks to a console MOBA(They won't) the genre will remain a go-to. Shooters are a staple of gaming, much like rock is to music. Like it or not, it's here to stay. It may wax and wane over the years but it's always gonna be there. I also think a console MOBA would bomb so hard it'd never get out of the studio.

I disagree with your assertion that the RTS genre will be destroyed by MOBAs. RTS games are currently only produced by a few companies that specialize in their production, so they aren't exactly participating in any real competition. Many of these companies offer unique experiences within the genre itself, such as Creative Assembly's massive scale battles and Paradox's real time campaign map.

[QUOTE=TestECull;43855520]I hope to god it doesn't happen. I've tried a couple of MOBAs and found their playerbase to be the single most toxic group of people I've ever bumped into. Makes the dark recesses of the internet look positively docile most days.[/QUOTE] This is how I see it. Call of Duty has a pretty terrible community, but at least it's easy to get into the game itself. MOBAs on the other hand make it extremely difficult to get into both the community and the game, and that's not good if they want to become more mainstream. I've heard a lot of horror stories about MOBA communities, like how new players barely get a chance to learn a game since all the MLGNOSCOPEKILLSTREAKxXxxX players keep throwing them away.

[QUOTE=The Stills;43855498]I feel like MOBAs are never going to be properly "mainstream", because accessibility is always going to be a problem. Even League of Legends which is arguably the most accessible MOBA at the moment has a huge learning curve for anyone unfamiliar with the genre. The survival MMO/sandboxes/something-craft, whatever you want to call them on the other hand are for the most part immediately accessible. It helps that a lot of them use a lot of the same mechanics as other genres from the get go, but there is less of a need for immediate dedication compared to a MOBA. Minecraft you can just play for fifteen minutes on a random day and feel like you accomplished something, in a MOBA a single match alone can take up to over an hour and to actually start to get better and learn the game, you're going to need to play a lot of matches.[/QUOTE] You say that accessibility is a problem, but I've actually met a lot of people that started gaming playing a MOBA and to this day only play that stuff. I think it's pretty plausible that MOBA will become the new standard, simply because the amount of people playing those games have increased at a massive rate.

I don't think they will be in a way. You will see a lot of developers jumping on them sure, but even now there are plenty of moba's that have failed in popularity in terms of not being unique, fun, balanced, or supported with updates. You still see them have a couple thousand players when they first launch up but there have only really been three moba titles that I would even call good, and only two of them are still played. I think we're reaching an era where there's so many damn gamers that not one genre will ever be "dominant", Dota 2 alone has millions of unique players but there's still millions playing shooters, mmo's, and the like. I agree that we'll see a lot more people trying to emulate that success, but I think most of these "cash-in" mobas will fail hard, much like the ones now already do. But hey, if a gem does come out of that, and it's a truly fun game, what's to hate? I for one, welcome our moba overlords.

[QUOTE=The Stills;43855498]I feel like MOBAs are never going to be properly "mainstream", because accessibility is always going to be a problem. Even League of Legends which is arguably the most accessible MOBA at the moment has a huge learning curve for anyone unfamiliar with the genre. The survival MMO/sandboxes/something-craft, whatever you want to call them on the other hand are for the most part immediately accessible. It helps that a lot of them use a lot of the same mechanics as other genres from the get go, but there is less of a need for immediate dedication compared to a MOBA. Minecraft you can just play for fifteen minutes on a random day and feel like you accomplished something, in a MOBA a single match alone can take up to over an hour and to actually start to get better and learn the game, you're going to need to play a lot of matches.[/QUOTE] I haven't played league in a bit but from what I've seen it's been getting much much easier than what it was a few years ago. Dota also got better tutorials recently which explain the basic concepts of a MOBA very well. I have a feeling that accessibility won't be a problem soon. Sure there are a lot of things to learn to do well in a MOBA, but as long as you're paired up with other beginners I don't see the problem. [editline]9th February 2014[/editline] Also a proper MOBA is not possible on a console, unlike all of the other dominant genres.

I'm not afraid MOBAs will choke out general games, but I do fear for the RTS genre with the increase in MOBAs.

[QUOTE=Aphtonites;43855595] I've heard a lot of horror stories about MOBA communities, like how new players barely get a chance to learn a game since all the MLGNOSCOPEKILLSTREAKxXxxX players keep throwing them away.[/QUOTE] That was definitely my experience with League. I get in, explicitly mention I just got the game and would like some help learning wtf I'm supposed to do in that pre-match pick-your-champ screen, and the other four on my team went OK. Match starts they all run off doing their thing, leaving me to fend for myself, and when I make even the slightest mistake they open up with the sorts of vitriol you'd expect out of someone who just got told their entire extended family disowned them or something. They knew I had no idea what I was doing when the match started, even agreed to give me pointers, then proceeded to ignore me until I made a mistake then rip me open for that mistake. So I swore off the whole genre. Haven't looked back since. If the playerbase is that toxic and that openly hostile to newbies there's no reason for me to bother with the genre.

Smartphone/tablet apps are and will be the dominant game genre...whatever that means. What DO you mean by dominant game genre? Is it popularity, ie. number of people who play? Is it the amount of money developers invest into a genre? In that case, does that only include triple-A or perhaps indies as well? Is it exposure to the public via corporate marketing or social media?

I do believe that "MOBAS" will be dominant in pc gaming, but not in the way specified in this thread. I think league of legends and dota 2 will get increasingly popular and will never stop rising in popularity. The thing with this genre is since there is a huge learning curve (learning all the heroes, etc.), it is pretty much impossible for any new games to be as popular. The only reason dota 2 received a lot of attention was because it is the sequel to game that started it all with the developer that made popular first, and because it was well made second. Valve could have made any kind of "MOBA"; but if it wasn't dota, there was no way they could compete with league of legends

In my opinion it will just remain a giant competitive niche as they are very difficult for many people to get into. So pretty much just like modern sports, enjoyed by the masses, played by not near as many.

My personal guess is that survival games are probably a lot more dominant than MOBAs as of now with games like Minecraft, DayZ, Rust, Project Zomboid, Starbound, Terraria, Dead Rising, Infestation: Survivor Stories, Don't Starve... etc Fine with me, zombies may be cliché but at least they're not as aggressive as the average MOBA player

I would like nothing more than to enjoy playing dota but I just can't. I'm really not a fan of mobas.

Hopefully not, i highly doubt it as they aim at a very specific group. If anything i would say open world mmo zombie survival is going to dominate 2010

I don't see MOBAs being huge in the sense of lots of them being made, They'll be huge in the sense of lots of players playing them. (DOTA, League)

Dominant genre is the type of genre companies see as profitable. First person shooter is a dominant Genre in the 2000s era and Platformers were dominant in the early 1990s. MOBA has the potential to be the next dominant game genre in this decade. Survival open world game might be dominant in this first half of this decade but a lot people are getting tired of zombie survival games. Regarding console MOBAs. While there is no known console version of DOTA-like games that I could think of right now, MOBAs is technically simplified enough to be played on a console with a game controller compared to a traditional RTS since you don't need to control large armies and micromanage bases. I can image a DOTA-Like game able to use the Wii U controller effectively which i wonder why no game developer has ever taken advantage of it yet. People always said that FPS will never survive as a console game but thanks to Halo, we got Call of Duty. Just you wait. If Microsoft or Sony or even Nintendo decided to invest on a good console MOBA, everyone will want to jump ship. I am pretty sure you would love to play a MOBA Smash Bros or Fire Emblem for the Wii U or a Halo MOBA for the Xbox One. I may have to agree FPS won't die off completely but it will be overshadowed by MOBAs if those games ever get super popular with bro-gamers. Like I said, MOBAs is like a game of Chess. Chess is hard but if you know the basic of Chess, you are ready to go. But if someone out there can make MOBAs difficulty like a game of Checkers, it would really attract a lot of casual audience.

[QUOTE=The Stills;43855498]I feel like MOBAs are never going to be properly "mainstream", because accessibility is always going to be a problem. Even League of Legends which is arguably the most accessible MOBA at the moment has a huge learning curve for anyone unfamiliar with the genre. The survival MMO/sandboxes/something-craft, whatever you want to call them on the other hand are for the most part immediately accessible. It helps that a lot of them use a lot of the same mechanics as other genres from the get go, but there is less of a need for immediate dedication compared to a MOBA. Minecraft you can just play for fifteen minutes on a random day and feel like you accomplished something, in a MOBA a single match alone can take up to over an hour and to actually start to get better and learn the game, you're going to need to play a lot of matches.[/QUOTE] LoL is the 1st most played game in the world, Dota 2 is 2nd most played. They already are bigger than WoW or CoD.

MOBA's are too unforgiving, i would say MMOFPS's are going to be the dominant game of the 2010s, look we have games like World of Tanks, Day-Z among ones i can think of, the next thing is that they are great at adopting the femium model in ways that doesn't make it seem necessary. fremium FPS's in general are probably more common than MOBAs, i mean there are a lot of MOBAs but really DOTA2 and LoL are the only two that are doing well the cost of development and server space is just so dirt cheap anymore. when WoW started development blizzard had to spend 6-7 years developing the engine and it was a very risky venture initially with the amount of serverspace required for the game and they had to build out carefully. today there are plenty of engines out there that can do what you need and serverspace is dirt cheap and much more compact, yoggscast runs all their minecraft servers off of one rack for example, but bigger games don't need a massive data center like WoW did when it came out, just a few racks.

I do think that MOBAs will become as popular as FPS on the PC. And that's where it becomes trivial. MOBAs are nearly non-existent for the console community and that plays a huge part in what makes a super popular, decade defining genre. I think that the FPS will continue to have firm footing for a long time just because it has more outlets available. MOBAs are and will be popular, but there are a lot of things keeping people from playing them which might be its fatal flaw.

[QUOTE=The Baconator;43858876]LoL is the 1st most played game in the world, Dota 2 is 2nd most played. They already are bigger than WoW or CoD.[/QUOTE] Where are these numbers from?

[url=http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/01/27/player-tally-for-league-of-legends-surges/]As of January 2014, over 67 million people play League of Legends per month, 27 million per day, and over 7.5 million concurrently during peak hours.[/url] But still this is irrelevant, if you walk up to a random person in the street and ask them what the most played video game in the world is, they're more likely to guess Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto or Angry Birds. Outside of the core community of gamers, no one knows what League of Legends is, let alone a MOBA.

I don't think so. By number of players yes, by number of titles no. I also believe a console MOBA would be sub-par, assuming it's even possible (controller only has so many buttons).

MOBAs are kinda popular here in college actually, i go into this one lounge every day and theres at least 4 guys playing LoL, but more importantly theres a lot of PC gaming going on because the uni's network is stupid and is hard to get things like xboxes to work with the internet right

I don't think I could ever really get into a MOBA. [editline]12th February 2014[/editline] So I hope not..

[QUOTE=BCell;43855353][B]Will MOBAs be the dominant game genre of the 2010s era?[/B] MOBAs or [B]Multiplayer Online Battle Arena[/B] is a genre of games that evolved from your standard point and click real time strategy games except instead of controlling large armies, you only control one powerful unit. A typical MOBA gameplay is to destroy the enemy base while defending your own. As of lately, We have been seeing game companies intent to go into MOBA genre games seeing how quickly this genre has become popular thanks to League of Legends and DOTA 2. The fact is that MOBA has been so casualised that a newbie can pick up the game and play with just a few hours of tutorial. I would say the learning difficulty of MOBA is equivalent to Chess but like chess, once you master the basic of MOBAs, you are ready to go. First Person shooter by now have grown stale especially the FPS featuring Modern Military Shooter. People are getting tired of Shooter games that always involve modern military warfare. You may argue that MOBA destroyed what's left of RTS or Real Time Strategy games. Valve once said MOBAs are the "Action Real Time Strategy game" I believe MOBAs will one day within this decade become the dominant game genre while First Person Shooter will enventually lose it's popularity like how platformers have become back in the beginning of the 2000s era. What's not to say that a console MOBA game will overthrow Call of Duty FPS as the popular multiplayer game in the near future one day? MOBAs compare to a traditional RTS can be easily adapted for Consoles if properly implemented. Let's take a look at the most dominant game genre from each era 1980s- arcade space shooter and racing 1990s- Platformers and Fighting games 2000s- First Person Shooter and MMORPG 2010s- MOBA might be a potential dominant game genre of the 2010-ers (Rogue-like open world games like Minecraft, DayZ and Rust would have been considered a potential dominant Genre but not many companies are getting into this genre yet) If you never played a MOBA game, then you ought to try DOTA or League of Legends or Smite and see why people are getting addicted to this kind of genre. Remember, the moment a consolized MOBA game gets mainstream popularity is the moment FPS genre will start dying.[/QUOTE] Maybe. I think it's starting to overtake SC leagues. But you can't forget that apart from RTS, there are also First Person Shooter leagues. I think those will stay for a while longer, parallel to MOBA. [editline]12th February 2014[/editline] Blizzard is actually supposed to drop a Dota clone pretty soon themselves... so I guess SC is already getting buried. [editline]12th February 2014[/editline] BTW, you mentioned that 2000-2010 was shared between FPS and MMO/RPG. I think MOBA and MMO/RPG are very similar. And you forgot RTS (SC in Korea?!?!)

[QUOTE=KD007;43880764]Maybe. I think it's starting to overtake SC leagues. But you can't forget that apart from RTS, there are also First Person Shooter leagues. I think those will stay for a while longer, parallel to MOBA. [editline]12th February 2014[/editline] Blizzard is actually supposed to drop a Dota clone pretty soon themselves... so I guess SC is already getting buried. [editline]12th February 2014[/editline] BTW, you mentioned that 2000-2010 was shared between FPS and MMO/RPG. I think MOBA and MMO/RPG are very similar. And you forgot RTS (SC in Korea?!?!)[/QUOTE] MOBA is more like action RTS than it is an RPG. RPG or Role Playing game tends to be more adventure like game while RTS feels more action combat. Just because there is Leveling and item usage doesn't mean it's a full RPG. MOBAs don't have quests and an actual story progression

[QUOTE=BCell;43885692]MOBA is more like action RTS than it is an RPG. RPG or Role Playing game tends to be more adventure like game while RTS feels more action combat. Just because there is Leveling and item usage doesn't mean it's a full RPG. MOBAs don't have quests and an actual story progression[/QUOTE] You are correct there as well. I actually always thought of MOBA as an even split between RPG and RTS. It plays very much like an RTS, but the only catch is the multiple skill/unit system. Although some RTS's put that in (like the trebuchet in AOE2 or the mine layer dude in SC), they don't do it as much as MOBAs do.