2024-09-26 - MOBAs Suck
MOBAs suck. I think they are one of the worst ways to enjoy videogames and possibly the worst genre outside of h-games. They are fundamentally designed to not be fun and to get you hooked on a dopamine gambling high. This isn't necessarily intended by the game developers, however, this is just a result of the format. I think this also applies to other genres of games but I'll explain why I hate MOBAs the most first. MOBAs, or 'ASSFAGGOTS' as referred to on certain boards on mongolian basket weaving forums, stand for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. While not necessarily required, the genre essentially involves the following components: Small team sizes, locked games, lanes, items, and character scaling. Basically any MOBA I can think of has all of these. The problem components are small team sizes and locked games, while the other components are only sub problems spawned from the main ones, and would normally be fine on their own, but in this case they enhance the problem. I think inherently the biggest problem of MOBAs comes from the team sizes and it affects all the other components so let's work down the tree. First off, when you play multiplayer games, there's essentially two ways to have them. Multiplayer PvE and Multiplayer PvP. While MOBAs are all PvP, it's worth mentioning PvE. PvE multiplayer games are often things like co-op RPGs, survival games, etc. Because it's PvE and because you often have to choose who you're playing with in these games, they are usually designed where teamwork is necessary, and if the game puts you with random players, designed so one player can win on their own with skill (though easier if both are working together). My repertoire of games isn't immense but I would like to give you one example, that being StarCraft 2 Co-op. It's a mode where two players get put into one of a handful of missions, and have to work together to complete an objective. Other than maybe one map (Lock n Load) all of the missions CAN be completed by a single player. It's harder, but possible. Especially on lower to mid difficulties, one player can easily carry the other. I think this is good game design, because it makes it so that you can play with other people but you aren't being chained to losing because of them. Other than in some extreme cases like on mutators (designed to be much harder than regular) you losing is usually your fault. Additionally, in things like Co-op RPGs you are most often playing with a buddy or a friend and you're either showing them the game, learning it from them, or playing on equal terms, and you are definitely going to be having some form of teamwork. Couch co-op games are designed under the assumption that you'll be working together because, well, why wouldn't you be? Plus, many of these are just singleplayer games with an online mode, making it so the other player existing doesn't do anything other than maybe scale the enemies to be a bit more difficult. Contrast that with other online games, specifically MOBAs but other games like Overwatch also fall into this, where the game is designed around teammwork but you're playing with randoms and there's no incentive for teamwork. Because players have no incentive to work together, unless they're doing co-op with friends, online games necessarily need to be designed around the assumption that players will NOT work together most of the time. Take my favorite game, Team Fortress 2. The game design is excellent and near perfect for a multiplayer game. The team sizes are large enough that one player not doing their job doesn't matter, one player can't carry the entire game, but cleverly balanced so teamwork happens, completely accidentally. There is (almost always) exactly one objective, and most of the fighting happens in one or two areas. Players will be fighting with their team and helping eachother simply by accident just by playing. This works perfectly because the developers were correct, most people don't want to work together, they just go and frag and kill people on their own. But because of the design, doing this actually contributes to the main goal and everyone contributes towards one objective. Now, contrast this with a game like League of Legends. In League, there are multiple goals. Being a MOBA, the true goal is to destroy the enemy's nexus/home base, but there are loads of sub goals created, such as destroying towers, optional objectives, and because it's a scaling game, killing enemies becomes an objective. There are so many objectives that every player on the team can be working towards different goals separately without helping eachother at all. This is an example of a badly designed team game. Players normally don't have any incentive to help eachother, and there's so many goals that they won't coincidentally help eachother either. (Coincidentally, a side mode, ARAM, does not have this problem because it's a single lane with one objective). Now that I have hopefully impressed the importance of accounting for teamwork in game design, here is why it sucks in MOBAs. In MOBAs, because there are so many things to do, farming, pushing, jungling, skirmishing, bosses, players can all be doing different things and since the game is designed around teamwork, not working together makes you lose more. In almost all scenarios if there's a 2 vs 1, the solo player will die assuming everyone is the same level. So if one player wants to farm off on their own on the top, while the team is fighting on the bottom, their team will be at a disadvantage and probably lose. This generates a great deal of stress, and frustration, as well as toxicity towards your allies, because their shortcomings are affecting you. The fact that they are not participating in the fight is why you lost. The reason is because of the team sizes. In MOBAs, teams are usually around the 5 player count. Because of how the games are balanced and designed, necessarily one player DOES make a difference. They are a large enough contribution to the team that one player performing badly affects you. Contrast this to a larger team size game, where your team is 10, 20, 30 players. One player sitting in the corner banging their head against the wall doesn't matter, because they are only a small fraction of the team's strength. In games like that, people like to make fun of noobs but no one (sane) really ever gets angry at them. Because their contribution isn't making the decisive difference. In a multiplayer game, the team that wins is the one with the higher average skill, and the more people, the less that one player affects that average. If MOBAs were balanced around team sizes of 10 or 20, they would certainly be more fun. Even moreso if they were one lane modes like ARAM, or smaller maps where players aren't going off doing their own thing often. TF2 works because someone follows the path to the fight or objective and comes across enemies, and naturally engages in them. LoL doesn't because there's a massive map and you can go anywhere on it without necessarily encountering someone. Additionally, the lower the team size, the higher the toxicity of the game. Notice how MOBAs, games like Counterstrike or Overwatch, have very toxic and angry fanbases. That's obviously because a terrible player on your team affects your ability to win so you're more likely to get angry at them. This also means players aren't allowed to just do whatever they want, they generally have to adhere to a meta or be doomed to be useless and a drag on their team. Being forced into a small box in a game that actually does have options is an additional point of frustration. The remaining points are largely problems built off of this. First, when I say locked games, I mean games you can't just join and leave as you please. You're put into a match, and you have to sit in the match until it's over. Well, you can leave, but people can't join, plus many locked games penalize you for leaving, so you aren't really free to do so. When team sizes are small, locked games are oppressing because you get 'locked' into a game with people, who might leave, where each person DOES have a large impact, and where (often) you can tell if you're going to lose very early on. Locked games aren't inherently a bad thing, look at Halo multiplayer. The multiplayer is still a blast despite not being able to freely leave or join, because there are enough players on a team that the problems are nullified. Locked games specifically become a problem in lower player counts because the outcomes of games are more easily determined, and you get influenced more by individuals. In a low player game, if your team has some bad players, you can know you're going to lose at the start and not be able to leave. You can know there's one very good player on the enemy team, and he'll be able to carry them single handedly. But you can't do anything about it, because you're locked into the game. Games where players can't leave or join necessarily need large player counts to be fun, additionally because of skill averaging who will win/lose is much harder to determine. Some other concerns with MOBAs get enhanced by the low player count. A large map isn't a problem with tons of people, but with few it's harder to run into someone and fights become more broken up into chunks, so not everyone is influencing eachother. A fight in top lane doesn't directly affect bottom lane and vice versa. In a game with a small map with a single choke, there's only one fight, so everyone contributes. In a small player count game, kills that cause you to scale are more important because one player dying can boost another on the enemy team, which greatly shifts the power balance, further enhancing that bad players cause you to lose more. In a larger player count game, one player getting a streak and getting a powerful boost isn't that big of a deal because a big boost still can't offset a huge enemy team alone. Scaling experience and gold also means that worse players fall behind, which is again enhanced by lower player count. Now, while I don't enjoy fighting games, I know many people do. And I think they are well designed games. The reason being that because the player count isn't just low - it's solo. There's no allies that can drag you down, it's only your own skill. They don't have (as) toxic fanbases because people don't get mad at other players, other than when they pick characters they deem 'overpowered' or 'unfun'. There's much less reason to get frustrated at them if you're at peace with yourself. So, if MOBAs are just terrible to play and are as unfun as I say, why do people play them? I think it's basically because MOBAs are like a drug addiction. When you first play, and everyone you play with (because of mmr/rankings) are around your experience level, nobody knows what they're doing and you can experience the game in a fun way. You haven't been hooked yet, you're just experiencing the game for the first time. You can do what you want, and because everyone is pretty much the same skill level each player won't be a huge detriment to your team so it doesn't matter as much. As you keep playing, and you learn the meta, and you win and lose more and games get longer, things change. You start being able to predict who will win and lose at the start, so sitting in a game for 30-40 minutes is just a pain. You start getting teammates or enemies that are vastly above/below the average skill, causing games to get swayed. Most importantly, this causes people to value winning and losing above all else. Whenever I see someone talk about League of Legends or Overwatch, all they talk about is their win or loss streak. It's all that matters to them. The dopamine high they get addicted to from winning is rare, it takes up to an hour to get sometimes, and the middle parts of the game are just not entertaining enough. Many MOBAs suffer from the moment to moment gameplay just not being very fun. Because of that, people only play in order to win. When that's all you do, you get hooked on the wins. Depsite people universally thinking League sucks, people play it. They are hooked on the dopamine. Even though winning a game (crushing victory, mostly) can feel good, only winning feels the best, and being on a losing team in a losing game is horrible, it's the withdrawal between wins that causes the dopamine seeking behavior. I believe that in any given match of a MOBA, unless the teams are perfectly balanced, only half the lobby is having fun at any given time. This is obviously extremely poor game design, as games should be designed so as many are having fun at once as possible. I think the two worst elements to make a bad game are ones with lower player counts, and locked games. All the other factors just enhance it. It's why, though I think Overwatch is bad, it's not nearly as problematic as something like League. Overwatch doesn't have scaling kill benefits apart from ultimates, so dying isn't as big of a problem and maps are small enough that combat is fairly centralized. But it's still unfun due to the fact that you still hate being in losing games, and winning games only matters for the win. MOBAs have the two main problems but more that just cause the genre to rise to be the worst. I mentioned earlier about TF2, my favorite game. I will say that casual matchmaking has many of these problems, mainly locked games, but that's a topic for another time I feel like ranting. I used to play League of Legends back in middle school in what feels like eons ago. It was fun for the first year or two then it became just a bad habit. I broke the habit and I'm glad I did.