Super Monday Night Combat Research

Super Monday Night Combat

Super Monday night combat unlike most MOBA games is a 3^rd person shooter game instead of the more traditional point and click isometric view.

Super Monday night combat is the sequel to the hit Xbox live arcade game Monday night combat. MNC was only available on the Xbox live market place and was a much slimmer more tower defence based game than the more MOBA like SMNC. Smnc is now a free to play MOBA game on the PC, it is fundamentally different when compared to the more conventional MOBA games.

Super Monday Night Combat distinguishes itself from its competition by having a more arcade like feel to its gameplay, the game has more modes and maps than the standard MOBA game because it’s gameplay style allows for a more simplistic take on the game style.

The game features a currency like other MOBA games but has no items and inventory in which to build a character through items. Instead SMNC focuses on using currency to level up the character abilities instead of experience. The players may also by buffs through vendors in the game arena.

Instead of tiers of towers protecting their bases instead SMNC fuses the game with tower defence aspects and lets the players construct turrets with the currency they earn. These turrets can be rebuilt and upgraded unlike the turrets in most MOBA games which are one time only defensive structures. 

Dota 2 research

Dota 2

DOTA 2 or Defence of the Ancients 2 is the upcoming sequel to the original DOTA mod.

The new Dota 2 is a full game and not a mod, now created by Valve. It will be a free to play game with micro transaction like most other MOBA games.

Dota 2’s heroes are split into 3 categories in 2 factions, heroes fall under strength, agility or intelligence. The 2 factions are Radiant and Dire, the Radiant faction is located on the bottom left of the map and the Dire on the top right. 

Dota 2 has some fundamental differences between itself and other Moba games, it is substantially more complicated than games like League of legends. Dota 2 has an item system where players can buy items during the game to improve their character, this in itself is not that unique but Valve allows its players to create their own items for use in the game.

Dota 2 also features a day and night cycle, this cycle causes changes on the map and is also intertwined with some heroes abilities.

Dota 2 like all other moba games has the players gain currency over time, in this case gold. Dota 2 however gives the players much less gold over time forcing the players to manage the real time strategy element of the game more than say League of legends as that game is more focused on the player’s character.  Like other moba games though there is a focus on last hitting minions to generate the most amount of gold in the least amount of time.

League of legends research

League of legends was originally named League of Legends: Clash of Fates, the name was shortened once the game grew in popularity.

League of legends is the largest and most successful MOBA game to date. It currently has over 100 unique champions for players to learn and use. It has four different maps each with their own game type requiring strategies in order to achieve victory.

The game recently hosted the season 2 world championships which had a 2 million dollar prize pool. The prize pool alone is a testament to how big League of legends has become.

League of legends has 32 million active players a month, by hours played per month it is easily the most played game in the world. League of legends was originally taken from the hit Warcraft mod called Defence of the Ancients, the game style involves two teams on opposing sides of a map both battling to conquer and destroy the other teams base. The game type eventually gained the name MOBA or multiplayer online battle arena.

Riot games, the development team who created League of legends were formed by fans of the original Dota game and the original Warcraft modders. They took their ground work on Dota and created a more streamlined and refined version of the original game with new characters and a new game engine.

League of legends characters fall into a number of roles, mage, support, attack damage carry, tank, fighter and Jungler. Each character gains experience from killing enemies or minions. Upon gaining enough experience the player’s champions will gain a level and an ability point to improve one ability per level up to a cap of level 18. Each champion has 5 abilities, 1 passive, 3 core abilities and 1 ultimate. The core abilities can leveled up 5 times and the ultimate 3 times.

League of legends main arena is called summoners rift, it is a 5 on 5 arena with 3 lanes. The area between the lanes is called the jungle, it houses brushes and neutral monsters. Neutral monster grant buffs to those who kill them, a red buff that grants a slow and a damage over time effect to anyone attacked by the user of the buff, a blue buff which grants mana regeneration and cool down reduction. A smaller green buff gives a small amount of health regeneration. One of the main objectives on the map is a monster called Barron Nashor, this is the strongest monster in the arena and cannot be killed until late in the game. Upon killing it every person on the team that killed it gains a strong buff that increases numerous stats.

League of legends continually growing list of champions have skins, these skins used to be simple palette swaps but Riot have been steadily improving the quality of the champion skins.

Above is one of the latest champions to be released, Rengar the pride stalker. On the left is his standard skin and on the right is his alternate headhunter skin. This is the kind of result I will try to accomplish with each of my characters. These skins are sold through micro transactions and make up a large amount of the games profit, creating good character skins will be useful.