MOBA is the most famous game genre here in our country. Games like League of Legends, DotA and DOTA 2 has been dominating the vast gamers' market.
Now, a new MOBA is trying to penetrate the gaming scene. Chaos Online just released it's PH server and is now catering to the Filipino gamers.
For those who didn't know, Chaos Online started very much like dota. Chaos Online started as a Mod-map (Customized) of WarCraft named Chaos DOTA. Due to the popularity of the game, Neoact decided to make a Chaos it's own platform thus Chaos Online is born.
I've been playing Chaos Online for quite sometime now and I can say it really has the potential to capture the community's hearts.
Below are a few features of the said game. I've also wrote some observations and things that the developer might want to take a look at. Now let's take a look at what might be the next big thing in PH Gaming scene:
1. Like Other MOBA games, heroes are divided into 2 groups: Immortal Legion and Divine Uniion. Both faction contained unique set of heroes thus making the game more unpredictable.
2. Unlike DotA, heroes are not for free. You need to buy them via 3 ways:
- By In-Game Gold - Everytime you play a game, you'll receive gold that you can use to buy in-game items as well as heroes.
- By Yellow points - You can buy yellow points to unlock unowned heroes
- By Red Points - Everyday, each player will be given 3 free red points. it will give you access to an unowned hero but unlike yellow points, you can't buy red points
Personal note: I like how Chaos Online made a way so that players will have to play more and more to gain access to unowned heroes.
3. Like LoL, Heroes can be upgraded via cards.
4.The map is bigger than DOTA thus travelling from top to bottom is hard. You can use the wayportals at each neutral camps to travel faster but you can only use the portals twice per game.
5. Defenses are much stronger than those of DOTA and LoL. In order to push, you need to break 2 first towers, 1 guardian, another tower and a mighty bird at the 3rd. there's also 4 towers defending the main throne.
6. Items can be bought anywhere on the map. Consumables are also permanent in the slots that you can find at the bottom right panel.
7. There's also a back-to-camp system in Chaos Online but unlike LoL, You're invulnerable when you press "z" making it a good escaping tool during ganks.
So here's my observation (rather shoutouts to the developer) about the gameplay: (this is just my personal opinion)
1. Please take that healing fairy out - Thinking how to kill an enemy without being killed is a necessary skill to be called a good player. You have to calculate the skills and the attacks you have to do in order for kill to be successful, however, adding a random healing system on the game make the game more of a "lucky" one than a "strategic" one.
2. Please add the deny system - Strength heroes in Chaos Online is quite powerful. STR heroes can boost up their HP by up to 2000+ during the first 3 minutes of the game thus making farming easier. Adding the deny system will balance the farming capacity of these heroes via denies that will prevent them from getting easy 6 packs.
3. Nerf the anti-magic potion - Nukers are at a very good disadvantage on this game due to the presence of the anti-magic potion. If you're a nuker faced with a killer hero, you have to buy ward of deneutralization and your own AM potion just to have a decent exchange of damage. Make it more expensive or the cooldown longer to balance things out.
4. Nerf "holder" skills - skills like the "Bondage" of Edelyn and Flame Shackles of Tersia is so imba considering that it can hold the enemy for almost 5 seconds, considering that it's only a normal skill and not an ultimate.
5. Let us be free in choosing our items - One of the frustrating things in CO is the lack of freedom of item choices. You can only buy 1 of each kind of "Ultimate Items", Unlike DOTA 2, you can't see the combination of an item if it's not part of the "suggested" items. This makes the player more dependent on the "Suggested" items than their own builds. Please just make the suggested items "suggested" rather than required.
6. what will we do with a lot of gold? - after having your 6 packs, you can't spend the gold you'll farm after that. You'll just gonna use it for the consumables which only cost less than 500. I suggest you insert the buy-back system or whatever. Just make something that we can use those golds.
7. Please add a Teleport scroll - using only the warpgates to defend your base is really frustrating. Taking the TP scroll out is just making the split push strategy very very strong. Imagine a full itemed akasha pushing the bottom while her teammates are pushing the top. If you're in the middle of the map, this spells a very very bad GG because you can't do anything about that. Adding the TP system makes it more balanced.
8. Make the value of gold higher - High Gold drop, Cheap tier 3 items makes the gold seems useless. Some of the heroes are aggressive in nature thus harassing the opponents a must. preventing the enemy to farm up while farming your items is already a basic logic. But at the mid game, those early harassments won't take it's toll as the farmers can easily buy their items due to the bad balance of the in-game economy.
9. Please do something about the control group - Micro is a necessity when playing a MOBA or an RTS. It's more of how you control your units and how to manouver them. But for Chaos Online, I find it so hard to micro especially those heroes that got some illusion skills. For example, Leonic, How will you control his illusions when you can't event click them? You just attack ground and pray that all your illusions attack the same target your main hero is attacking?Please add a drag-box so that we can select our units well.Also add a control group function (Ctrl + bind) or (Shift + bind) so that we can easily micro. I know koreans got high APMs when playing but please do think that even SC:BroodWar got these functions. It's not because you control 1 hero means you can only control 1 unit.
I have a lot more to comment but that makes this short review more of a novel. I know the game is still new and much can be worked on. I hope in my own little way, i've helped the community. Goodluck Chaos Online!
