Sunday, April 17, 2016

What makes M.O.B.A.s popular? (Luis)

A MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. It is a genre of videogames. Alongside with FPS (First Person Shooter) and RPG (Role Playing Game) they are the most played videogame genre. But why is MOBA the one of the most played videogame genre?

The first reason for MOBAs to such a popular genre in videogames it's that you get to play with your friends. The way MOBAs work it's that everything you do is online so you can decide to play with your friends or just go play alone. This gives the game a totally different flavor that other genres don't have like RPGs where you are forced to play alone most of the time following a campaign story. 

The second reason that makes MOBAs so popular is the variety of characters aka champions you get to play as. In LoL (League of Legends) that is the most popular MOBA and videogame in the world, you get to choose between 130 different champions. This makes the game have huge depth because each of the 130 champions has different abilities, design, story and personality. So probably between the 130 options everyone will find a champion they like.

The third thing that makes MOBAs popular is the variety of item builds you can do . There are a lot of different items that each accomplishes different things from giving your team vision (Sightstone) to giving you critical strike chance and attack damage (Infinity Edge). With all the variety of items you can create different play styles for one champion. Foe example you can decide to play a champion as: tank, bruiser, initiator, mage, assassin, support, adc (attack damage carry).

The fourth thing that makes MOBAs popular is the lane assignments. In a normal MOBA map there are three lanes and four patches of jungle. Each team has 5 champions that are normally divided in 1 top lane, 1 mid lane, 2 bottom lane, 1 jungle.  This makes you have the option of playing every champion in every lane against different situations.  


In conclusion what makes MOBAs so popular is mostly diversity in play styles and characters that give you the feeling of accomplishment when you master each in every role. It gives you a lot of different ways to play and win and with an ever-shifting META (most effective tactic available) it looks like the possibilities of new ways to play will never end.


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