Off Duty Gamer: Dawngate In-Depth First Look

Waystone Games

In the three and a half years since the release of League of Legends (LoL) we've seen the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, a term LoL's developers coined) market explode. Early on the only competition consisted of Heroes of Newerth, a game made by fellow former DoTA team members and had many similar features. The early year of the games' coexistence created a pretty heated rivalry between the two fanbases, nearly equal to that between Xbox and Playstation owners. Since then we've had entries from Valve, Petroglyph, Hi-Rez, Uber, Ironclad, and even a 2D version from Ronimo, but none have managed to capture the audience that LoL enjoys. This month, a new challenger stepped into the ring with Dawngate by Waystone Games, which hopes to inject some fresh gameplay into the genre with a radical new map and some interesting twists to item building. The game is currently in closed beta, but lucky me I got a key.




For those who haven't played any MOBA I'll go over the idea quickly. MOBAs generally pit two teams of five players against each other on a symmetrical map usually consisting of three lanes on a square (one lane diagonally across the map from corner to corner and two rounding either edge). Each lane contains six turrets, two four each team and an inhibitor. Each team has a base in opposite corners of the map. The space between the lanes is generally filled with stationary monster camps that can be destroyed for experience and buffs, plus one huge monster that usually takes most of the team to deal with and confers a team-wide buff. The goal of the game is to destroy the enemy turrets in sequence before destroying their inhibitor (which allows your team to spawn more powerful minions) and ultimately their nexus or other structures to win the game. Each player gets to select a character at the beginning of the match which determines their role on the team, be it tanking, assassinating enemy characters, support, etc. Character roles are further fine-tuned by buying items to enhance the character's various stats. 

While Dawngate shares the same core ideas of the MOBA, they've thrown a couple of very interesting wrenches into the gears. The biggest change is the map; they've thrown out the central lane, creating a large central jungle in its place. The two outer lanes now arc out from the bases and around, with their middles about halfway between the center of the map and the outer edge. Near each of the four corners is a Spirit Well, which is made up of minions gathering money. Each team starts with two of the four Wells in their control, but the Wells can be disrupted (by killing the minions, which take time to respawn) or even taken over (by standing on an enemy well for some time). The Wells start locked so no sneaky Shapers (the games term for the player characters) can capture them at the start of the game. 

Dawngate also puts a new twist on the turret/inhibitor relationship. While many MOBAs grant super-minions once the inhibitor is destroyed, Dawngate instead gets rid of the inhib and splits its effect amongst the lanes turrets. Each time you destroy a turret your large minion (who is generally part of every second wave) becomes slightly stronger, first gaining health, then damage. This means that destroying individual turrets quickly becomes much more important than in many MOBAs, as they can start a snowball effect early game to keep the enemy minions at a disadvantage. Luckily turrets will also respawn given time, setting the large minion back to his original form. 
As someone who has played lots and lots of LoL, I really like this setup. It rewards you early game for dealing quickly with turrets while punishing people for wandering off to go kill, a problem I've had in LoL with unhelpful teammates. By making the towers act as semi-inhibs it really emphasizes the importance of them; neglect them and you will loose. 

Waystone Games

Shapers have also gotten some changes from the standard MOBA format, but I think it makes the most sense to talk about base stats and items first in order for the Shaper selection to make sense. Unlike many MOBAs, which seperate everything your character does down to its own stat, Dawngate streamlines the process by combining several. Instead of Attack and Magical Power you now just have Power, which scales differently based on the characters role (for example, a Mage character may get only 50% of her Power stat as autoattack damage but 100% as magical damage, while an AD carry would have the opposite ratios). Haste incorporates movement speed, autoattack speed, and ability cooldown, and so on. This is a change that I'm not 100% sold on at the moment, though I can see both sides of the idea. On the one hand, it does prevent players from coming up with unusual builds for characters that even the developers didn't think of and hard-locks Shapers into the roles the devs gave them. On the other hand it gives the devs the ability to better control the games meta environment, which is important in a game they've already said they plan to push e-sports in. So I'd call that a wash. 

With new ways of handling stats come new ways of handling items. There are 6 basic items; Hunger (heals based on damage dealt), Life (health and health regen), Power (power), Resilience (Armor), Time (Haste), and Will (magic resistance). Each of these six has six Advanced items that they can be built in to, and each Advanced item has two Legendary items that they can be built in to. While Basic items confer one stat increase and sometimes an interesting passive, Advanced and Legendary items confer several stats that can tweak your Shapers play, along with unique passive effects like shields and armor reduction. This is essentially a streamlining of the traditional MOBA itemsets to go with the streamlining of stats.  In addition, each player has 1 ward with has its own dedicated key (f by default) and refreshes soon after expiring. According to Waystone this was done to prevent the team from forcing one player to be the only one buying wards and subsequently blaming that one player when they don't think s/he's doing a good job. I like this because that player is usually me.

Now, the Shapers themselves. So far there are only 13 Shapers total, but each one is well-made and those I've played so far have been quite fun. While there are a few that closely mimic the abilities and roles of their counterparts in other MOBAs, so far I've found them to have enough variety that they aren't boring. When you select your Shaper you can also select one or more roles that you wish to fulfill on the team; Gladiator (Carry), Tactician (Support), Hunter (Jungle), and Predator (Ganker/Assassin). These show up under your name so that players can have a quick idea of what role others plan to play BEFORE everyone locks their choice in. Once everyone has chosen their Shaper you pick one of the roles, which confer small bonus' to stats, money, or experience generation for the duration of the game. You also choose premade stat boosts similar to the runepage in LoL (not sure if these are editable as I only used the premade sets in order to play as many games as possible in the three hours I had). While the runepage-style selection isn't anything new, the roles give some very cool bonus' to encourage playing your part on the team. Gladiators gain a stacking bonus to money (called vim) earned per minion kill, Tacticians gain extra vim from minions that die nearby, Hunters do more damage to jungle creatures, and Predators gain bonus experience for kills and assists (these have all changed over the course of three beta weekends and will probably continue to be worked on). I should also mention that load times are crazy low, as the game starts loading during Shaper selection. I never had more than 10 seconds between the end of selection countdown and the beginning of the match

Waystone Games

Visually the game is very nice, though the art style is a little on the safe side. Like many MOBAs it has tried to emulate the colorful cell-shaded look of the original DoTA, which does make it look a little bland at first glance or in stills. Once the game is in motion, however, the art becomes much more interesting. Shapers all have very nice animations, the environment feels alive and vibrant, and there's little details everywhere, like moving grass and fidgeting jungle minions. The Shapers themselves look fantastic and have a few


really great designs like the Desecrator (seen here preparing to desecrate). Characters all have nice dialog and will have short exchanges with each other when their in proximity; they even have dialog for taking damage. The announcer system is very smooth, even verbally announcing when your Shaper is silenced or stunned, which I really liked. Even with all this my framerate was rock solid at 60 FPS (something that was true in LoL too until they upgraded the ARAM map; that place destroys my framerate for some reason) and I had only one instance of lag.

 
Overall I'm really impressed with what I've played. Its got a solid core, though balancing is obviously needed as its still in beta, and it has enough new features to make me want to play it over LoL even with its limited Shaper selection. I think the guys at Waystone have a very solid game on their hands and might just be able to start chipping away at LoLs throne if they play their cards right. If you're looking for a change in your multiplayer gaming or are new to MOBAs in general head on over to waystonegames.com to sign up for a beta key and check out some of the streams available on YouTube.