MOBA Genre - Denying And More

For my first real post I feel like talking about a fun genre I have enjoyed since its inception in Starcraft and its huge boom in Warcraft 3, the Massively Online Battle Arena (or MOBA for short) style game. This is a gameplay many associate to being the "DoTA Genre" though in truth it was the Aeon of Strife map that created it and other maps such as Tides of Blood were out first in Warcraft 3 before DoTA. DoTA was a bit more newb friendly though and had some interesting mechanics (Such as item recipes) which is why it took off more so than the others. That and the others had some even more complicated/longer gameplay elements that we can discuss another time. Regardless, the style of gameplay is similar between them all in that it's generally a 5v5 team battle (sometimes 6v6 or 3v3) on a map that has lanes appropriate to even out the numbers. Most also have PVE neutral mobs that can attack either team where some provide temporary bonuses for the hero or team (Tides of Blood and others did not, which kinda helps focus it more on team fights, but also can discourage players who enjoy the "jungling" aspect of MOBAs). The idea of the game is to choose a hero, level them up and equip them from the gold you get and help push the NPC minion waves your base spawns (as well as helping your teammates) to push and destroy the enemy's nexus/citadel/castle/etc. Quite simply, the genre is very fun for those who enjoy Player vs Player battles with elements of Player vs Environment attributes and RPG attributes (such as leveling, item management, skill management, etc). Each of them have unique elements that set them apart, but this tends to be the standard layout of a MOBA style gameplay.

There's one elements most have (League of Legends is one of the few that does not) though that causes some big debates and that's the ability to deny. To explain first, generally as the bases spawn NPC minions to push lanes in waves the idea is generally to try and help push the lane to take down towers to get to the heart of the enemy's base. However, the idea of denying is to kill your own minions and keep their wave closer to your side as well as denying (hence the term deny) the enemy heroes from gold and experience points. Whether you personally enjoy it is up to you, but I do find there are some flaws in the idea of denying. Oh, it does provide some fun ideas such as trying to force your opponenent to overextend so you can get a kill (or more), but that can still be done without denying and the drawbacks to denying just seem to be anti-fun.

From what I can tell denying isn't a good mechanic for several reasons. First, it provides a reward for very low risks. Now, normally I wouldn't mind so much if it was fun in a game but since MOBAs are competitive environments having anything with low risk, high reward is a poor idea. Now, one can argue you have to put yourself out there to kill the minions, but killing your own minions is really easy and you don't have to get out in the front lines unless you're a melee going against a ranged in which case you're going to naturally have a disadvantage. Even so, you can beat your minions as they are heading to the lane before they even get there putting you at an advantage of keeping them extended closer to your side. This can be countered with other tweaks, but it would seem beneficial to just remove deny and add other mechanics to encourage aggression which I'll get to later.

Second, the deny mechanic also is less skill based then not having deny but zoning out the opponent from experience. I'll explain as I'm sure people are like "what?" But, basically, the ability to deny is simply a click of a skill or actually attacking with "A" and click on the unit. Now, I'll agree the skill is timing it to make sure it kills the minion first before the enemy, but that's still not that hard to do compared to zoning out the player from the experience entirely and doesn't add enough depth compared to the draw backs of still causing a passive play (attacking your minions instead of the enemy's or even the enemy hero at all) and draws out the laning phase longer than if there wasn't denying. Now, the idea of zoning out the hero(es) from the experience is far more difficult. Not only do you have to make sure their push is stronger than yours, you have to push forward passed their minion line to aggressively push them back further toward their tower all the while keeping their minions from attacking you (both their front line and the ones coming in from their lane/base) and have to make sure their minion wave isn't large enough to seriously push hard on your own tower. This requires far more variables to account for and is a far more aggressive play style that's more enjoyable to do and watch.

Third, the deny mechanic offers no real counter to it. There are counters to many abilities (building armor vs physical damage, building some kinda magic defense vs magic damage, cleanses or shields for crowd control effects like stuns and slows and snares) and there are counters to strategy, but the only real counter to denying is to deny yourself or be able to 1 shot minions before them. This doesn't offer very engaging gameplay. If you can't counter denying, all you can do is deny yourself to even the playing field, you're just not adding anything fun to the game and just making it more frustrating to new players. The depth should be in the combat and strategies (like positioning, hero types, how you engage, etc) and not in something unintuitive like denying. Now, the argument you can zone out your opponent from denying is true and is skill based, but it will deny them experience which I've already stated you can do without having the deny mechanic.

Fourth, the obvious problem in that it is not intuitive at all to attack your own allies to benefit yourself. Not in a game like these (that is HoN, DoTA, ToB, EotA, AoS, LoL, etc). Who thinks when they start up a game such as this where you're trying to destroy your enemy's base that you should attack your own minions? Almost no one who hasn't already played this type of game. If a gameplay element isn't intuitive, it's generally considered a poor gameplay element. Now, this alone I wouldn't say is enough to discount denying, but it's the other problems (above and below) that all add up to it being a poor mechanic.

Fifth, denying slows down the laning phase and draws out the game more. This is another problem that's generally said a lot about denying (just like being unintuitive) which tends to still be agreed upon. If you're denying exp from the other and they are denying exp from you, it is slowing down your leveling and slows down your ability to get items (due to also keeping them from gaining gold). This slows down your ability to do the things you need to be able to leave your lane to gank or push other lanes and provide real fun to the game. This can be fixed and keep the denying mechanic, but then weakens denying anyways, so seems like another reason it'd be best to just remove denying mechanic from the game.

Sixth and finally (though I'm sure I'm missing a point or two), denying encourages PVE and doesn't promote PVP. This is true, but not necessarily a bad thing. The MOBA style definitely has a PVE element to it that is fun, but at the same time the focus should be on PVP so you do want to limit the focus of PVE a bit. There is usually enough incentive (towers, minions, neutral monsters with buffs to provide) to encourage the PVE aspects so it seems like there's no need for another. Again, like the unintuitive point, I wouldn't say this alone is enough to claim it's a bad mechanic.

For all of these reasons, I just can't find denying a good mechanic in any game. But there's always a chance it can be made to work. Now, I definitely agree with Nome's point (found here: http://s2nome.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/denying/) that the bigger problem is the focus on gold only and I agree an addition of a second resource gained only from PVP would help the problem immensely whether there is or isn't denying. So I agree that a crystal system (EoTA) or blood system (ToB) or whatever you want to call it is a great mechanic that every MOBA/AoS/DoTA/whatever style of game should look to implement. Basically, for those who don't know, this is a system where you gain a Crystal or Blood from killing other players ONLY and they tend to be used for upgrades to your base/minions/towers or even special items. Crystals (from EoTA), as I understand it, were gained regardless if you assisted or not, where as blood (from ToB) was gained only if you assisted in the kill or made the kill yourself. This mechanic encourages more PVP battles and really adds more dynamics to the MOBA genre that adds a lot of fun. You'd still have to make it intuitive so new gamers can understand its importance, but it's already more intuitive than denying is.

But there's even more that could be done too. Another idea (that could also be implemented) that tackles the problem of stagnant gameplay (which is prominent whether the game has denying or not) as well as another problem of not getting gold if you do most of the work is to make gold acquired not be based on if you got the last hit on a minion/hero, but did the majority of damage. Now, this still screws support/tanks a bit, but they should ideally be designed to have tools to help them farm well enough instead of getting hero kills. In the case they don't, there are other ways to implement this same idea with them (such as damage taken by the hero + damage done to the hero = % of gold or heals/buffs done constantly + damage/debuffs done to the hero could also play a part in the gold you receive from hero kills). This is an idea that obviously needs a lot of testing and tweaking to get the exact components that determine what portion of gold you get, but basically if looking at it from purely a minion stand point, if you do % damage to it you can get % gold. Now, straight like that is probably not good enough, but it's a start. This solves the problem of stagnant play as well as the problem of someone doing the majority of damage to a minion and getting denied ALL the gold because another minion, a tower, or another player got the last hit. This also makes gold a little more easier to get and decreases its importance slightly allowing to fix some of the problems Nome stated where gold was such an importance.

Yet, that's not all we could do to fix the stagnant play. Either dealing with the heroes themselves or the maps, there are other (and in my opinion better) ways to fix stagnant play and offer more depth to a game than to allow the ability to deny.

Now, while I personally don't feel denying is a mechanic I'd want to put into a MOBA game and would like more MOBA games to try not including the deny mechanic, I also think it'd be VERY bad for the genre if we encouraged all games to remove the deny mechanic (or all games in the genre to forcefully have the deny mechanic). Hopefully having a good number of games that have and don't have it will encourage new ideas to spawn and evolve the game further providing even more fun. Still, if I were to personally ever design a MOBA style game, I will likely not have a deny mechanic unless I can solve some of its other problems I see with it, but that would likely result in a very different hero type and perhaps even game type. Which might not be a bad thing, but would not necessarily be like what we have now.

I hope you enjoy my opinion on MOBA's deny mechanic and some ideas provided to encourage more PVP play and solve some of the other issues found in most MOBA style games. It doesn't make them the perfect genre or perfect game (no such thing), but it's a start at making a MOBA style game that could provide some even more interesting dynamics to it. Please, if you do comment try and be as mature as possible and state your own opinion. I may or may not reply, but I will likely read them out of my own interests and to see what others think as it might give me new ideas or point something out I've not thought of that redefines an opinion I have or gives me ideas.