Having spent well over 3000 hours in this game, I feel Paladins captures a fundamental flaw with the live-service, online MOBA genre that has forever plagued it; the tendency to overcomplicate design.
Early champions in Paladins are extremely basic concepts with simple kits. Take Viktor- he can shoot a rifle, sprint, throw a grenade, aim down sights and call an airstrike as his ultimate. The loadout and talent system unique to Paladins helps players fit Viktor to their preferences, and this has always been Paladins strength. The flexibility and depth that these mechanics can add to the existing roster, despite their simple concepts.
As the game has progressed, and more and more champions have been released, the trend has increasingly shifted towards extremely convoluted character designs with overtuned kits. Compare Viktor to the new DPS champion, Kasumi.
Kasumi stabs a voodoo doll that deals damage and applies stacks of "Curse," which stacks up to 5 times and causes them to deal less damage and take more damage. Her right click deals burst damage depending on the stacks, and debuffs if you have max stacks. Her Q places up to three traps; which deal damage, fear and also apply curse stacks. Everytime a new target gets a stack of curse, 2 stacks are removed from everyone else who has the curse applied. Her ult applies curse in an AoE and scales of the amount of stacks already applied to the initial target.
You kind of get my drift? Kasumi on released was an overtuned mess. She did everything: damage, area control, CC, had good mobility. There was no reason to play older characters over Kasumi who could just shoot and do damage. Why even do that when you can apply curse stacks on every action which were extremely rewarding for no effort?
The overdesign issue with MOBAs is something that plagues a lot of long-running live-service games. The power creep is one thing, but the sheer amount of stuff they try to cram in together in the base kit is actually exhausting. Characters have clear identities for sure, but gone is the original feeling of the game as these kits get more and more convoluted. It is not a coincidence nearly every new character that gets released is deemed too powerful by the balance team a season later.
Early champions in Paladins are extremely basic concepts with simple kits. Take Viktor- he can shoot a rifle, sprint, throw a grenade, aim down sights and call an airstrike as his ultimate. The loadout and talent system unique to Paladins helps players fit Viktor to their preferences, and this has always been Paladins strength. The flexibility and depth that these mechanics can add to the existing roster, despite their simple concepts.
As the game has progressed, and more and more champions have been released, the trend has increasingly shifted towards extremely convoluted character designs with overtuned kits. Compare Viktor to the new DPS champion, Kasumi.
Kasumi stabs a voodoo doll that deals damage and applies stacks of "Curse," which stacks up to 5 times and causes them to deal less damage and take more damage. Her right click deals burst damage depending on the stacks, and debuffs if you have max stacks. Her Q places up to three traps; which deal damage, fear and also apply curse stacks. Everytime a new target gets a stack of curse, 2 stacks are removed from everyone else who has the curse applied. Her ult applies curse in an AoE and scales of the amount of stacks already applied to the initial target.
You kind of get my drift? Kasumi on released was an overtuned mess. She did everything: damage, area control, CC, had good mobility. There was no reason to play older characters over Kasumi who could just shoot and do damage. Why even do that when you can apply curse stacks on every action which were extremely rewarding for no effort?
The overdesign issue with MOBAs is something that plagues a lot of long-running live-service games. The power creep is one thing, but the sheer amount of stuff they try to cram in together in the base kit is actually exhausting. Characters have clear identities for sure, but gone is the original feeling of the game as these kits get more and more convoluted. It is not a coincidence nearly every new character that gets released is deemed too powerful by the balance team a season later.
trinity
1 year ago