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[Preview] Dawngate: It'll Make a Believer Out of You
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
I’ve never been a fan of MOBAs. I can’t roleplay in them, they aren’t really known for being big on customization either. So that’s two of my favorite things in games taken out from the start. I never really bothered to give them the time of day. But after I met the Dawngate development team all of that changed. I’m actually giving Dawngate a try. You could say that they made a believer out of me.
Read more of Shannon Doyle's Dawngate: It'll Make a Believer Out of You.
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Played a lot of this game. If you're a league/dota player you should give it a try, otherwise it's still a moba. Roles being selected based on passives you pick in champ select is an awesome addition to MOBA's. 2 lanes, not 3. Gank lanes are much shorter/harder to see so there are way more skirmishes than most mobas. Baron is also an inhibitor that spawns superminions, which makes it a huge fighting point dead center of the map. There are still supports/adc/jungler/blahblah blah. The meta is still there. Items are built in pieces so there aren't many huge power-spikes. Player ranged missile speed is much faster than other games(and your minions) making last hitting less harsh on new players. Wards are trinket style only.
7/10 would login again gg
There are 2 things that make me not a fan of mobas. The PvP focus, and the point and click limitation for movement.
With that said, I enjoyed Dawngate quite a lot. I cannot choose only one because most of the mobas out there have a single thing that i really like so i try them all.
The two lane, role type, and spirit well mechanics are pretty good and keep me hooked to Dawngate. However, i also like some characters in LoL so i play it sometimes just to try and unlock those few characters. Dota 2 has really cool visuals and their payment model is the best in F2P as they dont charge you microtransactions so you only pay the exact amount of dollars you want to spend. And I really like Infinite Crisis because the circle map with capture point to get control of the towers and the orbital strike mechanic is really fun, but i like IC mostly because i can play with my favorite DC characters.
So Dawngate and Infinite Crisis are usually the two mobas (top down mobas) that i enjoy the most.
Dawngate is, in my opinion, the best game in the genre, though I haven't had the opportunity to test Gigantic (which looks to be a real contender) yet.
- Art
Dawngate has the best art style in the genre. "But isn't art subjective?" Well, yes. Art is a subjective medium, but Dawngate has two clear strengths that other titles in the genre do not. First and foremost, it is beautiful in an endearingly impressionistic way. Its stylized, almost painterly art style is similar to a Ghibli film in many regards - so much so that some of its characters look like they could have come straight out of Princess Mononoke or the unfortunately little-known video game, Jade Cocoon. It is also coherent, and I would argue that Dawngate is the first game in the entire MOBA genre to have a coherent art style. Every character on their roster looks and feels as though it belongs in the same world as the others. That is a wonderful change of pace compared to the ridiculous clash of serious and cartoony characters in every other MOBA roster or the unrealistic good vs. evil terrain clash of something like DotA.
- Story and Presentation
Dawngate has the best universe in the genre. And, no, this is not subjective. Whereas other titles in the genre have ignored story and limited their characters to meaningless, barely-connected lore blurbs, Dawngate's characters have clear connections and clear stories in their world. They did not stop there, however. Dawngate went the extra mile. It is one of three MOBA titles (Dawngate, IC, and Strife) to release a comic series. All of these started at approximately the same time, but Dawngate's has a clear superiority in terms of quality. This comic series is, unlike those of the other titles, woven directly into the game. Players are able to cast votes on particular, important story paths before these chapters are published. The winning path becomes a future chapter and shapes the story of the comic and the game while also spurring a skin release. It is entirely possible, if not likely, that the comic's direction may dictate some future character releases.
- Business model and grind.
Dawngate's business model is comparable to that of League of Legends. That's the typical story for a new moba title. The amount of grind to unlock a character in each is comparable. Rune unlock times are also comparable. Dawngate, however, also allows players to win spiritstones and sparks (the two components of their rune system) through nearly every match. There is even a chance that players can unlock a character or even a skin through a combination of luck, first-win-of-the-day-bonus, match length, victory bonus, and karma - a player commendation system that directly impacts the end-match rewards. This puts Dawngate's business model above titles like League or HoN, even if it can not hope to match the model of DotA2.
- Map
Here's the big thing. Dawngate is the first game in the genre to significantly innovate on the traditional MOBA map design. The article discusses this in considerable depth and the map is truly the defining feature of the game.
- Items
Dawngate's item system is a thing of beauty. It's a combination of simple branching paths that combine basic stats with passives. Every item is useful on every character through the game's unified stat system. Power boosts both attacks and skills (with different ratios for each character). Haste boosts movement speed, cooldowns, and attack speed (with different ratios for each character). Lifesteal effects both attacks and skills. Mastery improves the chance for both attack crits and skill overloads (a % chance to deal a % of bonus damage as an extra packet). Penetration effects both attacks and skills. Health, Armor, and Magic Resist are self-explanatory.
- Roles
It was inaccurate to say that a player's "role" is not dictated by their character. It is still blatantly obvious that character A is best as a tank or support and character B is best as a carry. The roles system of the game, however, allows players to choose how they would like to earn bonus gold on that character. These tend to line up with standard roles (carry, support, ganker, and jungler), but they do not do so perfectly. It's as simple as this: Gladiator earns bonus creep gold, Tactician earns bonus passive and harass gold, Jungler earns bonus jungle-creep gold, and Slayer earns bonus champ gold.
Ah, two lanes. Like Twisted Treeline in LoL ?
It's another moba. The queue is over there.
while I agree with most of your post i have to say that Regarding the map, Infinite Crisis also significantly innovated on the traditional map design. Not only the map but also the mechanics of it. Its a round map with lots of shortcuts in the middle. You dont kill enemy towers around the map to advance, you capture them and then they attack enemies. And the orbital strike capture point in the middle of the map is a nice change of pace from the parasite/dragon boss in mobas.
Dawngate is indeed a little gem but i wanted to point out its not the only innovator. I dont know if it waas the first or not, but thats not important, whats important is that some companies actually want to innovate the moba genre and these two made the first step with some serious changes.
I do agree that Infinite Crisis has changed the genre in some little ways, but it is not quite as extreme of a diversion from the norm as Dawngate is. The main innovations of IC are as such: its jungle buff system, which spawns various deployables, its top and bottom lane jungle creep, which spawns the EMP, coin-dropping, and destructible terrain. These are all good innovations, but they aren't quite strong enough to make IC really stand out as of this moment. It's going to take quite a bit more than that, considering IC already has a bad reputation with players in the genre as a League-clone (based on impressions from its early closed beta).
The map that I am talking about is, of course, its trilane map, which, while highly derivative, is its most innovative map outside of the unpopular and often-disabled Coast City.
The capture point map you mentioned is actually not very innovative. It is almost identical to League of Legend's control point map, right down to the center-area and spawn point design. Its only real innovations from the League map (which I can't remember the name of for the life of me) are its orbital cannon, coin system, and destructible terrain.
I am a big believer in the concept, play the game you like. I don't intend to criticize anyone's personal likes. I am not into MOBAs, I read your article with an open mind, and I still have no interest in Dawngate. For those who do, I say have a great time!