MOBA Genre Guide
- olirant
- Jan 27, 2016
- 4 min read
This post will be a guide on the moba, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, genre and what it is I want to create in my project. My FMP is to emulate and create a level in the style of the genre so this is meant to be used as a reference for that. The games I'm basing my project off in particular are League of Legends, Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm.
To put the genre simply they are top down games that evolved from the Real Time Strategy genre. From games like Warcraft 3 where you could control your hero and a band of troops, in Mobas you only control that singular hero. They are online games where teams of heroes work against another team, usually there being two teams fighting against eachother.
In some games those two teams have very different themes. For Dota 2 for example there are the Radiant and the Dire, nature and destruction. Each side of the map has a very different feel and is split apart by a river in the middle of the map, another very moba
The two sides of the map are very different and while there is some overlap between them where they blend together there is very little of that.Not every Moba does this but I definately want to create a map with that two very distinctive sides.
Mobas also have maps that have these lanes. Lanes are avenues of battle where gameplay mostly takes place on. A typical large map has three lanes though some will have one or two. My map for example will have two as it is intending to be a far smaller casual map. I will also have my map be horizontal instead of diagonal. This is done in the Moba Heroes of the Storm and I honestly prefer the way it looks and will make it far easier to present. I will be taking a lot of insperation from Heroes of the Storm for my project as it has smaller maps with more objective based gameplay. That is why my map has a meeting place in the middle for concept.
League of Legends recently had a map update and they uploaded online some of the reasons why they changed some things.
The main thing is clarity. It needs to be very clear what is land, what is gameplay related and it needs to be easy to see the characters and heroes of the game. While I won't have any characters on the game the clarity is very important. In an actual game this involves limiting the colour pallete which I will not be doing as I don't want to limit my project or have less contrast because of it.
You can clearly see the art style of moba's here. They tend to be rather low poly as framerate is important for the genre, but with very vibrant and hand painted textures. You can clearly see in the closer up image of the League of Legends map;
The best way I find to describe the art style used in most moba games is similar to hand painted minatures. Soft blended brush strokes being rather visable and with highlighted edges and painted on shadows. While tiling textures are not often used in some games, Heroes of the Storm uses large tiling textures to create the grounds of the level which I intend to do in my project.
A very important part of mobas are the buildings on the map. There are turrets called Towers that each side has and often they are differently themed or coloured for each side of the map. There are also bases which must be destroyed or defended by each time. Some games have other buildings aswell either making the bases like towns or large power buildings.
This image is very important. It's hard to find reference images for this genre that include wireframes and texture sheets. This is an actual asset from League of Legends showing its wireframe and its unwrap which is very important.
There are many designs for these towers. League of Legends has statues, and Heroes of the Storm has more weaponised buildings.
There are other areas in Mobas, a main one being the jungle. The jungle is areas between the lanes where neutral monsters exist. I want a small area of jungle in my level.
There are other parts of moba games that I actually want to avoid. The main one that I have not added to my level is spawning areas. Usually each side of the map has a spawner where players begin the game at and often can shop for in game items. This will be something I may add as a stretch goal but I don't want to do so far as I don't believe my level needs it to be effective right now. It's also very important to remember that the level I will be creating is of a much smaller scale which offers limitations.
I hope that this guide gives some more insight into what I want to create for my FMP. I will be constantly comparing and contrasting my level at significant steps to see what can be done to further make my level fit the genre.