I tried unite yesterday and man, people say hots is bad but unite makes hots look like the absolute pinnacle of moba design.
I love pokemon but all this game did for me was make me appreciate hots all that much more.
This was gonna be a reply to another topic but its just got so big i decided to make it its own post.
Heres a overview of pokemon unite.
Unite felt sluggish and almost clunky at times. Everything auto aims by default (skill shots and auto attacks) and if you want to actually aim you gotta hold down a combination of buttons which gets akward if your also trying to pan the camera and move around. Which is nessesary at times beacuse some pokemon have ranges that are longer then what you can see on the screen. Plus the auto aim does not prioritize players, instead it goes for the closest enemy.
Pokemon have only 2 abilities and 1 ult that charges the same way tracers ult does at a time. Thatâs it.
Combined with the auto aim, it really feels like micro is down played to the point of it being nonexistent. Macro seems to be the only thing that matters. Its like simultaneously dumbed down so that any kid could play but they way you actually play is alot more abstract then what a game actually made for kids should be.
The game is very snowbally. The main goal of a match is go in to the jungle and collect these orbs and then drop them off at a point to capture it. There are no minions, instead there are lots of creeps in the jungle and thats where most of your experience points will come from.
The problem is 3 fold.
First, you have to turn in your orbs on the enemy side of the map. The map is small and your movement speed is slow so sneaking a capture is not an option. Imagine if black hearts bay in hots had no top and mid lane and you had to turn in your coins at the enenies siege camp. Now these turn in points take the place of towers (forts/keeps in our case) on the map. You can only turn in 100 orbs in to these points before they disappear and you must move on to the next one in the lane. These points have no offense capabilities what so ever. Instead, allies who stand on the point gain a shield and the space between allied points is a big slow zone. These points cannot defend them selves. A player must be there to prevent captures. (These points are about the same size as the ones on braxis btw).
Heres how all this plays out in a game. The game starts amd everyone fans out in to the jungle to collect stuff and fight the red team. As orbs are collected and points are removed from the map, the losing team is naturally pushed further in to their base which means they must move through more and more enemy territory in order to score. This also means the winning team has more control over the jungle as the game goes on.
Oh yeah, and you drop all your orbs on death. Pain and suffering.
Next, the lack of micro as mentioned earlier also plays a big role in how unbalanced the game feels. In hots theres all kinds of counterplay in any given match up. You actually gotta aim your stuff, many abilities have delays, many heroes have interesting defensive option to choose from, each hero has 5 or more abilities and passives that all interact with eachother in neat ways. If the other team is a level or 2 its not like all hope is lost. In unite tho, theres not much you can do other then beat eachother up until one of you dies first. As far as I could tell there wasnât much there for someone to flex their superiority as a player. Especially outside of teamfights.
Finally, the Game is bursty. Now this is not an issue on its own. League and smite are both very bursty with insta death everywhere and those are still good games. The issue here is that the burst just compounds how bad everything else feels. When one team gets the lead, its not hard to start roaming the map and just start nukeing everybody which isnt hard given the maps small size.
Now theres also a bit of important meta game stuff to be done before a match to. Much like league, you can equip up to 3 held items and an extra ability that acts like the summoner spells from league called a battle item. For example I had a potion that I could use every 30 seconds for a 10% heal in game. Theres also a held item that shields a nearby ally for 20% of their health when you ult.
The balance of all these items is pretty all over the place but conceptually, this is fine. Donât got many compliments here assuming balance is coming. (Although really, it should already be balanced but eh).
I havenât had a whole lot of nice things to say but eh, it admittedly does have its moments from time to time and the vs ai mode ia nice despite its major issues.
Heres where it gets unforgivable tho. Yall who think activatavision is evil ainât seen nothing. Behold, Tencent! (quick edit to laugh at my self with this one now that diablo immortal has been released. oh how naive i was lol)
Like other mobas, you donât get everything at once and gotta go through unlocking stuff at a steady pace. For a little while at least. Much like a mobile game, the rate at which you unlock stuff slows way down after a while. This incentivizes you to engage with their 3 currencies and what feels like a deliberately confusing store to spees things up again. Among the things sold in this shop are freaking held items and battle items. Literal pay to win.
Some of this stuff is pretty good. Here in hots, you can feel a 2 level difference even with out a talent difference. Thats only 4% per level. In Unite you get 3 held items that can give upwards of 9% damage from your 1 out of 3 items in their base form.
Yes, their base form. These REDACTED items can be (well, need really) upgraded multiple times.
Needless to say, unite didnât really do it for me. Imma go play some hots now.
