Game Design tips from "March of Giants" a new MOBA with a unique take!
- Final Boss Editing
- 7 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Finally, something new in MOBAs.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE League like I love a kick in the face, but you don't go to League of Legends looking for something new. You return to League for that same ol' kick in the face goodness you've always experienced. But this... March of Giants... well, this quite literally hits differently.
The game has a lot of good stuff going for it, with a lot of balancing, the new swing more toward traditional RTS games could really be successful. But, we're creators, what can we learn from the success and failures (so far) of March of Giants:
Keep controls familiar
March borrows League's right-click and QWER bindings to much success. They even use the same recall key and more, and you know what? It felt wayyy better than other new MOBAs I've tested that have all gone with WASD movement. Is one better than the other? No. But is one more familiar to thousands of MOBA players? Yep, and that's the league key bindings.
Make last-hits obvious.
It's strange, League gave last-hit indicators in Wild Rift, but it's taken them literal years to apply it to the core LOL loop. I think it's valuable to keep the last hit mechanics since it provides a fun mini-game in lanes (and March of Giants heavily favors lane dynamics) and also gives a good skill reward without setting the bar impossibly high for new players.
Lane control 2.0.
March of Giants focuses heavily on lane management and lane control, and it benefits greatly from it. It gives players the "rush" of troops mechanic along with battlements, but not much more. And that's a good thing. It adds a few dynamic additions to lane combat, and stops before it gets overwhelming.
Deprecating Itemization.
Heroes of the Storm made smart moves in terms of reducing the impact of items, but with only three choices per level, the variety of build paths were limited. March of Giants solves this with their "augment" system in part. I still think there's some work to be done in that system since it's quite confusing at times, and a lot of the function of the augments isn't clear, but there's good potential there for simplicity of choice and build variety.
Slow-mo has downsides.
So March of Giants does struggle with overly ponderous movement. Each "champion/giant" moves so slowly that it gets a little tedious in the mid-game. I understand that this is important in combat to make it more accessible to less high-reflex players (like myself) but they should definitely consider giving these characters a small dash or using the "mount" system from HOTS to speed things up between lanes.
Returning to base is boring.
This is another area March struggles I think. In League's ARAM mode, they solve this by adding the little health pick-ups in lane, and I was surprised to see MOG (March of Giants) ignore this. I found myself buying tons of regen augments since returning all the way to base (even if I had the money to buy) felt quite tedious and left my lane in a bad spot.
Show clear priorities.
It's hard to tell what is working and what's not in lane control so far in MOG. When a wave of soldiers was sent at me, I found myself trying to damage the ground that they were traversing (though that didn't really seem effective). Likewise, I used tons of abilities on mob / minion control rather than champs only. Was that the right approach? Probably not, but it was hard to tell since hit and damage feedback were poor. Even showing a simple "Super Effective" green up arrow next to the damage numbers that were applied well could help. Even a red down arrow if I used a skill on a sub-optimal target that has resistance would help.
Overall, MOG had a lot of interesting thought put into it and a great set of mechanics, and I had a blast playing it. It's always interesting to play a familiar genre with different design principles and think through why they did (or didn't) work.
Also feel free to play my games worldseekers.io and hexapuzzlesaga.com to see if I put my money where my mouth is on game design. Likewise, if you like narrative my novel the-distributor.com is available on audiobook and ebook (hardcover coming soon).
Hope this little post was helpful for you, and may your Giant lead your feeble human troops to glorious battle!
And here's my YouTube video of my playthrough of the March of Giants alpha:
