Heroes, who can kill each other and have unique kits
In the most basic description, that’s what a MOBA is.
You want something that more closely resembles this, I introduce to you, Monday Night Combat.
So then what is Overwatch then? A Class Based FPS, pretty much exactly like Team Fortress 2. The similarities are pretty obvious to anyone who takes a look at the game. The key thing to remember though, is Overwatch essentially has more classes, and was designed with matchmaking in mind.
I really don’t think it’s a very common argument that Overwatch is a MOBA. I think when MOBA is brought up, it’s to say that Overwatch is an FPS/MOBA hybrid, or an FPS with some MOBA elements. I’ve never seen anyone try to claim that Overwatch is a full-on MOBA game
No-one’s said Overwatch is a pure MOBA though? If anything, people call it a FPS/MOBA hybrid, with the MOBA part coming from the heroes with unique kits and the objective based gameplay.
That’s literally what a Class Based FPS is, the Class Based part is so you can have a bigger focus on Objectives rather than straight Deathmatch.
There is nothing Moba about Overwatch, Titanfall has more in common with Mobas than this game does. I just got fed up with people using it as an argument to justify some of the mechanics this game has.
It’s a game that is heavily team based, which doesn’t classify it as a moba. A lot of games are team based, that doesn’t make them all mobas because not everyone on the same team has the same kit.
The thing is, the win condition of Overwatch requires you to play it like the latter half of a league match. Thats why its often referred to as a moba hybrid.
You mean standing on and capturing a point? Or the overtime where you have to do it all again, but in the leftover time you have? Both of those things are again, in TF2. But most people didn’t play Highlanders or 6s to know that.
Whoever came up with the term MOBA for games like League of Legends and Dota, didn’t really put a lot of thought into it.
MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. So many games would fall into all 4 of these categories. Quake, Doom, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, Paladins, and those are just a few of them. All of which FPS games.
It’s like a teamfighting simulator in a way. You gather up with your Tank in a lane, brawl, and push together as a team, so you can capture the objective/destroy the nexus. The teamfight and objective is an all in effort, it’s not like tf2 in the sense that you win if one of you can frag out because in Overwatch and LOL capturing the objective requires a lot of sustain. In LOL theres mandated roles, in Overwatch theres rq.
It’s not even a MOBA hybrid. Skills and ultimates don’t make something a MOBA.
^
^
What’s hilarious is that actual MOBA games are so punishing and skill dependent. Those players who are making the comparisons wouldn’t last one second in an actual MOBA but they’re trying to tack on that genre to “excuse” easy mechanics.
TF2 had a lot of the same roles and mechanics Overwatch does.
The problem with TF2 is there was only one correct way to play it, 2 scouts, 2 soldiers, 1 medic, 1 demo. The game is so fast that there is no need for a Tank per say, which is what the Heavy and Engineer would both do in the broadest sense. And highlander didn’t really work because some classes are not meant to be ran while one is present, or all the time. Spy for example relies on stealth and surprise, and the longer he’s in play the harder his job gets. If there is an Engineer, Scout basically does not get to play because he really doesn’t have anything he can do other than use Bonk.
All Overwatch did was see a need for a game where everyone can feel included, regardless of what they played. That’s why you have distinct roles and a ton of classes rather than customization. They want to allow someone to pick a kit that they enjoy, and be able to play it any level.
The real problem here is though, some heroes just are not going to be designed in a way that allows them to be more than low rank stomping, or they have mechanics that shut down so many playstyles that it leads to metas that completely dominate the scene for long periods of time.
Overwatch has great intentions but flawed execution.
The ‘MOBA’ elements in Overwatch are basically just terminology though - the words ‘ultimate’ and ‘ability’. There were weapons with cooldowns in TF2 and special abilities that charged over time.
If Overwatch is a MOBA hybrid, then TF2 is as well.