Character abilities and upgrades seem lackluster.

[Droolguy]

It feels like both the unique character abilities and the general upgrades in this game are solely there to make it look like it has more diversity than it does.

The level of asymmetric gameplay is *extremely low* for a MOBA type game due to the fact that the vast majority of all of the skills are relatively low impact and high cooldown.

Valve, your trying way too hard to make everything appeal to everyone, and in so doing, everything is incredibly bland.

It's O.K. if some characters play wildly different than other characters, that's kinda the point.

As is I have trouble picking characters not because there are so many I like to play with interesting mechanics, but because like 3/4ths the entire roster plays *exactly the same* and has virtually nothing interesting about them being a generic shooter character with a slightly different button press every once in a while.

[Ponyeater]

They also don't fit from a lore / visual standpoint. It's all an eyesore. The voices don't even fit their characters.
This game in general has incredibly weak characterization.

[Droolguy]

Originally posted by Ponyeater:

They also don't fit from a lore / visual standpoint. It's all an eyesore. The voices don't even fit their characters.
This game in general has incredibly weak characterization.

This is sad too, because I like MOBAs and I like shooters, but if Valve wanted an idea as to where to start with something like this they should have looked at Smite (Pretty much their direct competitor) and started tweaking from there.

This game has an almost total lack of real skillshots across all characters, the sniper classes both use what are basically slow firing machine guns and suffer from damage falloff (hilarious for sniper characters to be punished for actually... sniping), there's a grand total of 1 placement archetype and the emplacements are pretty non-threatening. There are pretty much zero actual support classes, every single one that comes close is a "DPS hybrid". There are no real CC classes either that aren't one-trick ponies focused on just burst damage with a CC twist.

This feels like what you get when you let the accountants design the game, everything appears close to being what it should be on the surface, but it's just generic enough to avoid stepping on anyones toes who picks the "wrong" character for their playstyle.

Which, fine, I actually see the value in allowing players to build their own characters out. I really like RPGs and lootershooters as well, but then you run into the upgrade system which seems tailor made to pigeonhole people into very specific builds due to the incredibly specific and limiting use cases for each upgrade.

Say you wanted to build purple for cooldown reduction on a class with a decent CC and just mess with the other teams positioning, constantly? Can't do that. Your not allowed to stack cooldown reductions because there's only a couple of them, and one only works on whatever ability you stick it on.

Want to add charges to a non-charge ability? Can't do that. Non-charge abilities can not benefit from charge based nodes period, making them wholly useless for a whole bunch of the characters.

"The illusion of choice" is the name of the game here... whole bunch of buttons, but their bonuses and use cases are carefully designed to just be specific enough to force a loose meta.

[gamerpawsitive]

im having a blast, probably one of my favorite games to come out in a long time.