Yearly Archives: 2013

Dawngate First Impressions

By Jason Harper (Hhean), OnRPG MOBA Reporter

 Dawngate First Impressions

Dawngate is the first MOBA made by Waystone Games, a development studio to have the misfortune to be owned by EA. While many MOBAs in the past were using DOTA as a base template, Dawngate has been influenced more than a little by League of Legends. The game invites comparison before you’re even in a match, as the game’s client is a similar floating window with a near identical layout to the one LoL uses. When getting into the game itself, the similarities make themselves even more apparent; There are summoner spells (many of which are exactly the same, others which act like LoL’s support items), brush and a level cap of eighteen. There’s even subtle nods to LoL in the game’s colour palette and character movement speeds.

 Dawngate Hero Closeup

Before declaring this yet another monstrosity emerging from EA’s cloning vats though, Dawngate has plenty of fresh ideas to set it apart from its forebears. The most notable of which is the game’s unique map. Its most similar cousin would be LoL’s new Twisted Treeline, but rebuilt from the ground up with five players in mind. It has two lanes, with a central boss monster and four altars in the corners. These altars function much like the gold mines in an RTS, giving your team a steady stream of income while a band of NPC workers move back and forth between the altar and some rocky outcroppings. They can be captured by standing on them, but the minions can also be killed for fun and profit. This can create some great play and counterplay, as leaving a lane to try and take an altar while you think the enemy can’t retaliate (due to them ganking another lane or you straight up murdering them) sets you up with not only a good bit of upfront gain, but also a steady stream of profit thereafter. Misjudge your enemy though, and you’ll not only lose farm from your lane, but they’ll get an easy kill while you’re so far from towers.

 Dawngate Mining Altar

Only Dawngate doesn’t call its defensive structures ‘towers’. Bindings, as the game calls them, don’t just spew laser death at your enemies. If your team drops an enemy team’s, your own team’s siege minions will be slightly upgraded in that lane, getting better upgrades as each tower falls. This sounds like it should snowball the game quickly, but each successive binding is far stronger than the last, with the final one in a lane capable of murdering anything that dares approach. These bindings also will respawn over time, allowing for late game comebacks if you can hold out long enough to get your defenses back in order.

 Dawngate Retreat

The win condition of the map isn’t simply destroying an inanimate structure, but to slay a towering monstrosity in the enemy team’s base. Since this monster will be tough as nails to bring down, it means that even if you’re absolutely wrecking an enemy team early on, you’ll still need some levels and equipment to take it down, buying them time to get their bindings back up. While this same system was found in SMITE, the combination with the bindings respawn timers is a great combination that allows victory to be possible even on the brink of defeat, even if it isn’t very likely.

 Dawngate Base Boss

Cooldowns are short, ranging from five seconds to a minute. Most characters don’t even have a resource to manage, so there’s little reason not to keep spamming attacks at the enemy. While this may take away some of the tactical depth of the game (and that’s only a maybe), it feels good to know you’ll always have your character’s tools at your disposal rather than feeling the frustration of saying “I could have killed him if I hadn’t just run out of mana there!”. The main problem I see right now though is that crowd control effects are currently very strong, since even though they’re on a short duration in Dawngate, you can keep throwing abilities at them until they’re locked down long enough to be killed.

 Dawngate Skill Spam

Another good bit of streamlining is that wards are free. Every member of a team gets a single free ward to place, but they can’t buy any others. This means that no-one on the team will have to act as a traditional hard support, spamming wards across the map. Instead, it’s the job of every member of the team to fight back against the fog of war. Consumables also have their own inventory slots, meaning they don’t become unusable in the late game when you’re approaching build completion.

 Dawngate Item Tree

Due to the unusual two lane map and no need for a ward monkey, the game doesn’t use the usual MOBA roles. The game does have archetypes though, a role selected at the start of a match that changes how your character will gain an income during a match. Gladiators fill the usual carry role, gaining increased gains from last hitting minions. Strategists are the closest thing the game has to a support role, gaining benefits when a minion wave dies near them, without the need to last hit. Unsurprisingly, many teams run with both of these two in the lane together at the same time. Hunters gain benefits from jungling, and Predators gain additional benefits from murdering people. It’s an interesting choice to avoid the normal names for these roles (Carry, support, jungler and ganker), and maybe implies that Waystone Games hope to see a more flexible metagame in their title. The starting meta in the game seems to be two players in a lane with a roaming jungler, but perhaps things will open up when players have more than an evening to play with the game.

 Dawngate Hero And Skin Select

In addition to the archetypes, a player can modify their character with perks in a similar fashion to the runes from League of Legends. However these are fixed sets of stat blocks that are available to the player right from the get go rather than a set of modular sockets. While developer videos have implied that they intend for these to be customisable at release, I actually prefer the system as it stands right now. The system is quick to get going, adds some depth and character customisation without LoL’s grind or its tendency to get mired in page after page of mathematical calculations.

 Dawngate Jungle

The game looks and sounds great, with no load screens to boot. I can only assume the game offloads the load times into the character selection process itself, making the game feel incredibly smooth. The character designs vary from bland to insane, with a good deal more of the latter than the former. The mechanical character kits seem solid, with a good deal of internal synergy. While the cast is currently on the small side, that no doubt will change as the game approaches release.

Dawngate Team Battle
After just a short time with Dawngate, I can say it looks to have plenty of potential. While it’s not likely to take the top spots from Dota 2 or LoL, it looks like a solid product that iterates on a well-known formula while bringing plenty of its own ideas to the table. Very enthusiastic about seeing more of this game in the future.

Dawngate

Dawngate is a new MOBA, built from the ground up to look and feel familiar while offering a whole new way to experience MOBA gameplay. Dawngate empowers you to forge the champions you love for the roles you want in a competitive arena, shaped by ever-evolving, community-driven content and story.

 

Features

Binding Towers: Push through either lane to destroy the enemy’s towers and gain upgrades to your minions to push harder than ever before. But each subsequent tower is immensely stronger and towers can regenerate over time so don’t ever let up the push!

Base Boss: Think you’re team is going to push to an early win? Think again. The enemy base is protected by a powerful boss that will require you to level up your characters and push plenty of minions to stand a chance against, allowing the other team ample time to regroup and recover.

Altar Resources: Four resource nods farmed by npc minions provide additional gold to the team in control. But watch out as your enemy can ambush your npcs to hinder your progress.

Rolls: Choose your roll on the team from the start without care for which hero you pick to impact the way you gain resources, opening up the meta to allow more diverse team strategies.

Rising Storm

Rising Storm is a first person shooter game based on the Pacific campaign of 1941-45. It takes place in several, famous strategic locations.

The game covers the famous island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945 as the US Army and Marine Corps fight it out with the Imperial Japanese army and Special Naval Landing Forces. Featuring some of the most brutal fighting in the Pacific theater, players are able to experience beach assaults, jungle fighting, close quarters night fighting and more across Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Saipan, among other historic hot spots. The player is able to take the part of either side – American or Japanese – battling it out online in full player versus player multi-player.

Soldier Front 2 Xanthids Dev Blog

Soldier Front 2 Xanthids 1

At ease, soldiers!

 

Not all combat has to be taken seriously. While a high level of realism is one of the central pillars of Soldier Front 2’s gameplay, variety is just as important. If you want to let off some steam blasting non-human opponents, we don’t want to stop you! That’s why the Xanthids, SF2’s evil alien hordes, are featured in several modes in the game (because let’s face it, zombies are soooooo 2010).

 Soldier Front 2 Xanthids 2

Xanthids give us a great opportunity to open up the style of play with various game modes. The one that we see intriguing most people is Hero mode — because it’s not every day that a shooter seamlessly incorporates MOBA gameplay. These are arguably the two most competitive genres in the online gaming space, so it’s only natural to blend them!

 Soldier Front 2 Xanthids 3

One thing we really feel is unique about this mixture is the feeling of truly being in the action. The standard overhead view of a MOBA inherently creates a feeling of separation from your character and what they’re doing. Adding a first-person view really ramps up the adrenaline and makes you feel like a critical working cog in the overall machine of your army.

 Soldier Front 2 Xanthids 4

While we have other modes featuring Xanthids on the way, there’s a party mode called Shatter that doesn’t always see a lot of hype, but is a perennial favorite around the office at Aeria Games. Shatter is just full-blown craziness — two teams in a tiny arena with glass floors hovering over a bed of spikes. Each player starts out with just a pistol, and there’s a mad dash for powerups in the middle. You can kill people the old-fashioned way or shoot out the floor beneath them so they fall into the spikes. It’s the perfect thing when you want a frenzied, fever-pitched battle with no breathing room until a match ends.

 Soldier Front 2 Xanthids 5

We certainly hope you get the most out of SF2’s traditional modes, but everyone enjoys going out of the ordinary sometimes. We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield, wherever it may be!

 Soldier Front 2 Xanthids 6

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more info on the game at http://soldierfront2.aeriagames.com!

OnRPG Shotgun News 5/28: GW2 Update and Infinite Crisis Reveal

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG News Junkie

Cyborg Joins Infinite Crisis Crew

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There has been some exciting news from Infinite Crisis today as they’ve revealed Cyborg in an all new video which you can watch below. They’ve also released all new art of Green Lantern which you can see above.

 

Last Stand at Southsun Releases Today

Canach

Guild Wars 2 players need only wait a little longer, (or maybe not at all depending on what time you’re reading this) for the next part of the drama in Southsun Cove. And to get everyone even more excited they’ve released a gameplay highlight video. They’ll also be doing a live stream tonight on their twitch channel at 12PM PDT.

“Uncanny” Event Arrives in Silkroad Online

Silkroad Uncanny

Leading online game developer and publisher, Joymax, today announced its exciting new event, the “Uncanny Part 1,” for its long-running worldwide MMORPG, Silkroad Online.  Players are in for a treat when they discover a hot new item will be available alongside a groundbreaking sale!

 

A new item release for players level 1-49 will feature a mind-blowing 1,000% EXP point increase scroll now available in the Item Mall.  This exciting 1,000% increase has only appeared once before, Joymax Day, and it left players clamoring for more.  Now it’s back, and players can get it whenever they want!

 

“Uncanny Part 1” will also feature a groundbreaking sale with 80% off two cool items.  A 20% damage increase/absorption scroll, a 100% resurrection scroll and a +3 Option level enhancement scroll will all be on sale for an eye-popping 80% off!  Players should act fast before this exciting deal disappears.