Dawngate (new MOBA)

Well, kind of newish. Closed beta started about a year ago, and it's since moved to "community beta" which is kind of like an open beta but not. I started playing about a month and a half ago, and TotalBiscuit did a Double-Yew-Tee-Eff Is...? recently, so I decided it might be good to make a thread about it.

Simply, it's a 5v5 matchup where two teams of "Shapers" ( Dawngate's name for heroes or champions) try to kill the opposing team's Guardian, much like you try to kill the enemy Nexus or Ancient. However, unlike in League or Dota, the Guardian isn't defenseless when the last defending Binding (turret/tower) falls. The Guardian is essentially a raidboss, and is quite capable of holding off the enemy team long enough for its allied shapers to respawn and defend.

The map has only two lanes with a huge jungle surrounding them. In the center is the Parasite, Dawngate's version of Baron or Roshan. At the four corners are "Spirit Wells." Each Well generates Spirit Well Workers that gives the controlling team a passive vim (gold) bonus, to the tune of 1.5 vim per minute per worker. Each well supports up to 27 workers, so if a team has two wells, you're getting a passive 81vpm, while controlling all four gives a nice 162vpm. You can, of course, farm the enemy Workers to simultaneously get a little extra cash and to hamper the enemy economy.

In addition to archetypes, like carry, support, assassin (mobile burst-oriented squishy-killer), bruiser (akin to a Dota strength carry, I guess), etcetera, there are also four roles that each player can pick. Gladiator is basically a farmer, and gets bonus gold from last hitting lane creeps. Tactician gets bonus gold from being near a dying lane minion and also receives vim from damaging enemy shapers. Hunter is a jungler that gets bonus damage and lifesteal against neutral creeps, and Predator is a roaming ganker that gets increased vim and XP from kills and assists, as well as bonus vim from killing enemy Spirit Well Workers.

The role system lets you play unorthodox combinations, like two carries in a lane, with one being Gladiator and the other being Tactician. The Tactician carry might be a little underfarmed in the midgame, but since he's a carry, he'll still be very strong late game. You can pick two Tacticians to a lane who don't focus on last hitting, and instead focus on harassing the enemy out of lane. You can have a jungler, or two junglers, or no junglers. You can have a jungler roaming around with a Predator for constant ganks.

At the end of the game, you go to a Karma screen. You can award Karma to the players in the game, either on your team or the enemy team. After that, you get the reward screen which rolls a random number. Depending on the number you roll, and other modifiers like the Karma you received, whether you won the game or not, and if it's your first win of the day, you receive a reward. Depending on the quality of the reward, you get spirit stones (something like League runes), destiny (in-game currency), or can even unlock a Shaper. It's a pretty nice system to encourage civility in a MOBA crowd, which, let's face it, isn't usually a nice population. If you're nice, you get better rewards. You're not so nice, you don't.

If you're going to use a League-to- Dota spectrum, Dawngate feels more like League (I don't play League myself, though I occasionally watch streams). The monetization system is like League's, with a free client, a rotation of free characters (10 at any given time in Dawngate's case), currency earned in-game (destiny), and currency purchased with real money (Waystone Points).


The game is free to download at Dawngate. The game is hosted by EA, and requires an Origin account, but it does not require the Origin client. It uses its own client. Also from what the devs have said, EA hasn't had much say in the design process. They just provide the servers (and the office space, I think). The client folder is about 1GB, so it should be a fast download if you want to give it a closer look.

There are community resource sites like MOBA-Champion and The Shaper's Guild if you just want to read up on the game.


All in all I like this game. I have something like 1300 hours on Dota, but this game is extremely fun. I'll be honest and say that it doesn't have the plethora of mechanics that Dota 2 has, but the system is still very well thought out and crisp. The art is very nice to look at, and the devs put a lot of work into the lore.

And one of the characters is a talking otter pirate who whips people with an electric eel. Her ultimate scoops up some poor fool into the sky before suplexing them into the ground with great justice. How can you not like that?

 

Uu, nice summary. This looks interesting. Will be giving it a try

 

TotalBiscuit just did a " Is...." on this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DitBaWMMErc

Edit: Part of the quote seems to have been censored.

 

Yeah, I mentioned that at the top of my post.

He actually seemed to like it, which should at least get a lot of his viewers to at least try it. I hope a good chunk of those viewers like it, too. It's a pretty good game.

 

To those still interested--even peripherally--in Dawngate, they're rolling out an update early next week, including a new Shaper and a rework of Kindra's ultimate (more on that below).

The Vod of the reveal was uploaded to youtube. It's an archer carry, but with his skills I can see him doing some bang up lane support. Well, since I personally hate ricing, I'll be playing him as a Tactician.


Near the end of the video they discussed Kindra's ultimate changing. Her ultimate used to be a near duplicate of Juggernaut's Omnislash (which I hear is similar to Fiora's ultimate in League).

By the way, to those who follow the League scene, the soulless ginger doing the reveal is Pluto, who was apparently a notable name in League. Speaking of, Zekent's also employed by Waystone.