League of Legends vs. The Dawngate
I understand that many of my followers are primarily League players, but fear not; I am here to inform and enlighten you! League of Legends is a MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) which means it is a real-time multiplayer strategy game in which the player controls a single character on a team. This genre started with DOTA (defense of the ancients), a mod for Warcraft 3, but has evolved far from there. At this point there are probably dozens of MOBA's out there. LoL and DOTA 2 are probably the most popular, but there are others as well including Smite, Heroes of Newearth, Heroes of the Storm, Infinite Crisis, and finally, The Dawngate.
Dawngate is a game developed by Waystone Games, an EA games studio. Dawngate entered community beta in April 2014 after almost a year of closed beta. It is still not 100% finished (in fact it's far from finished according to the developers), but I think it is a great game and a good addition to the MOBA genre. To give you an idea of what Dawngate is I will compare it to LoL visually, strategically and also in terms of client features.
Visually LoL and Dawngate are actually rather similar, but there are a few differences. Both games have a sort of cartoonish look to them, which makes them different from games like DOTA 2 and HoN, but whereas LoL is mor stylized, Dawngate is somewhat exaggerated in its use of colors and shapes. Dawngate is also more bionic, instead of a nexus there is a Guardian, a large creature, and instead of stone golems in the jungle, dawngate has soft shapes and colorful animals (including the "cute mushroom camps") even the turrets (called "bindings" in Dawngate" are living creatures (kind of).
The Cute Mushroom camp gives a good image of what jungle monsters look like in Dawngate. (Which is adorable)
The Guardian of the blue side a.k.a The Spirit side. As you can see he is a living creature and when you attack him, he is awesome!
This is a binding in Dawngate, it is a cute magic creature, just like most other things in dawngate.
This is The Parasite, it is kind of like Baron Nashor, but not really. Also it evolves and looks cooler at higher levels. More on that later.
For those who are familiar with LoL, which I assume is most of you, you can see that Dawngate's visual design is more colorful and "magical" than that of League. On the other hand, League of Legends has become much more detailed and good-looking with the recent visual updates of old champions (Sivir, Twitch, Twisted Fate, Nidalee etc) and is going for a more stylized and "realistic" look.
In terms of strategy and mechanics, Dawngate and LoL are vastly different games. This is immediately apparent simply through the map. In Danwgate there are only 2 lanes, instead of League's 3; this means that there is a large central area which is where the Parasite is located. The parasite gives gold, experience and a buff - like Baron Nashor, but it also makes your team spawn "striders" in both lanes. Striders are similar to League's superminions and by placing this objective in the middle of the map rather than at one end, like inhibitors, teams get a much greater chance of coming back from a deficit. Stealing a Parasite will make your lanes push and so it is very difficult for the other team to push back. For other reasons, which I will discuss later, it is nearly impossible to finish a game of Dawngate WITHOUT the striders, which I think is a limiting factor.
In Dawngate the final objective, the Nexus if you will, is called the Guardian. The Guardian is a large creature with several special attacks, but these attacks can be disabled by destroying "cores" placed around him in the base. These attacks and the combined health of all the cores + the guardian makes it a very difficult objective to take down. The Guardian is invulnerable until all its cores are destroyed and this means it takes a while to finish it off. Additionally it fights for itself and deals massive damage so there will be no "Xpeke-moments" in Dawngate. However, The Guardian is a really fun objective to deal with because all its attacks are skillshots and can be dodged, this means an attacking team can avoid all the damage if they are skilled enough, and a defending team can use the skillshot damage to their advantage. Guardian fights in Dawngate are significantly more interesting than taking the Nexus in LoL in my opinion.
The item and stat system in Dawngate is also different from that in League. In Dawngate there are 6 basic tier items that each upgrade into several different medium tier items that again upgrade into several top tier items. There are no active items, but there are passive effects, additionally the items provide one of 7 different stats: Health, health regeneration, armor, magic resistance,haste, power and hunger. Power fuels spell damage as well as basic attack damage, haste fuels attack speed, movement speed and cooldown reduction and hunger fuels lifesteal and spell-vamp. This means that all champions, or "shapers" as they are called in Dawngate, can build the same items which actually provides a massive variety in item choices. Some items are slightly better than others, but they are all efficient for most characters.
To make up for the lack of active item choices Dawngate introduces the Spellbook. The spellbook lets you chose one spell on level 1, 10 and 18 and the spells are somewhat similar to summoner spells in League of Legends, but some are also similar to active items. Stasis, for instance, is basically the Zhonya's active effect, but the fact that it does not provide AP means any character can "build" it. It is also possible to change your spells throughout the match by spending a bit of Vim. The Spelbook allows for really great choices to be made by players throughout the match.
Finally, Dawngate introduces Spirit Wells to the genre. The Spirit Wells are 4 areas, one in each corner of the map, that can be owned by either team. When a team controls a spirit well the "spirit workers" will collect "vim" - the in-game currency of Dawngate - for that team. The other team can kill workers to reduce income or, after 15 minutes, capture the well for themselves. These objectives take the place of LoL's Dragon for early game objectives and allow the players to break laning phase much quicker. It also allows for some interesting strategic options which I will discuss later.
This is the western spirit well. You can see the glowing edge counting down until it is capturable and I (playing as The King of Masks) am killing spirit well workers.
Perhaps the largest difference except for the map is the out-of-game system. Althogh both League and Dawngate have a client, "ip" (called "destiny" in Dawngate) and "rp" (called "Waystone points" in Dawngate) their clients and out-of-game choices are fairly different. In League of Legends you choose summoner spells before the match, in Dawngate there is the Spellbook; in League there are runes, Dawngate introduces "loadouts" (a way to piece together stat pages with cool passive effects); but perhaps the biggest difference and, in my opinion, the greatest innovation of Dawngate, is the role system. Before every match the player chooses a Shaper and a Role. These Roles are Gladiator, Tactician, Predator, and Hunter and they influence how the player will gain their Vim throughout the match. Hunters gain more Vim from jungle monsters and are healed for a small amount every time they kill one; Gladiators gain extra gold from minion kills; Tacticians gain extra gold from harass and NOT getting last hits; and Predators gain extra gold from spirit well workers and kills. This means that any shaper can fill any role! If you want to play an "ad carry" in the jungle, you choose the Hunter role and roll with it. If you want to stay out of laning and gain your Vim and experience through kills and Spirit wells you can choose Predator. This Predator strategy has not really worked for me yet, but I think it has potential.
Another great invention of Dawngate is the Karma system and reward ceremony. At the end of a match you can choose to award Karma to all the playrs in the game based on whether you felt they "had a positive impact on the quality of the game or its outcomes". Then you get points for the game, points for winning, points for match length and points for the amount of Karma other players gave you and these points add up to give you the tier of your reward. Rewards range from Common to Divine and can contain Destiny, Loadout pieces or even Shapers and Skins onthe Divine tier. This system encourages both good behaviour and comradery and it is also excitng at the end of the match. The reward ceremony still needs some work with regard to its RNG and Graphic interface, but Dawngate is still in Beta.
Other near features of Dawngate include 0 loadtime - that's right, there is no loading screen! - and a visual novel called the Dawngate Chronicles as well as awesome Shaper lore.
In conclusion, I think Dawngate is a very different game from League of Legends, but a great addition to the MOBA genre. They are similar in terms of their money systems, genre and mechanics (right-click to move etc.),but vastly different in terms of strategic choices, out-of-game choices and art-style. Dawngate brings a couple of new things to the table, including their Role system, The Karma System and the Spirit Wells/Spirit Well Workers, but still feels like a traditional MOBA and will appeal to many MOBA players from DOTA, LoL and HoN. If you would like to try out Dawngate for your self it can be found here and is 100% free to play. Comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome and thank you for reading!
obligatory question mark:?
