Dawngate Post-mortem

For those that hadn't heard of it, Dawngate was a moba made by Waystone Studios. They were a new studio put together by EA games. They created a masterpiece of a game that never caught on due to the initial reluctance people have of moving into a new moba. Moba's take time and effort to build up a player base since it takes time and effort to acquire characters and learn the various champions (in Dawngate they are called Shapers). DG did some many things right that its sad to say that the servers close on February 5th and the game will disappear from the face of the earth. As my own tribute I'm going to talk about the game I fell madly in love with and all the things I adored about it.

(Disclaimer for those that played DG, I'm going to call vim gold for simplicity)

Resources seamshorces.
The first thing you notice when entering DG was the lack of any resource bar on most of the characters. In DG all characters were Garen. If a character would have mana in another game, instead they don't. Everything worked off of cooldowns only. This sounds utterly insane to anyone who has played other mobas, but it worked beautifully. What's been the primary issue with League for so long? They were adamant that there should be a lanning phase and that it should matter, but the mana system makes lanes stagnate. They have tried so many things to shake up lanes and make them more action oriented. It turns out that when you don't have to worry about going out of mana you can harass and use abilities far more. That was the whole reason people find League more playable than Dota. Abilities are able to be used more frequently and are less punishing to miss. DG took it one step forward and because of that there are characters that can only exists in that world. That isn't to say that no one had resources in DG. They still had Shapers with Rage and Energy. They even have one shaper that has a mana-like system, but its only to balance out her passive that reduces your ability cooldowns when you deal damage. The other reason there was far more interaction was...

Role Play
In DG you are faced with two distinct and important choices on the character select screen, Shaper and Role. Picking your role was independent of picking your Shaper. The roles were Hunter, Tactician, Gladiator, and Predator. Hunter was the jungling role. It gave you health back for killing neutral monsters and bonus gold for the same. Tactician was the support role. It doubled the gold you got from nearby lane minion deaths and proc'ed bonus gold for hitting an enemy Shaper. This made lanes far more active as Tacticians jockeyed for position and bonus gold. In lane, when minions die if you didn't last hit them you got 1/4 of the gold value of the minion passively. It made it a bit more forgiving for missing last hits, and for supports meant they were completely free to focus on getting their tact bonus gold. Gladiator was what people would consider the carry role. It gave double the value for last hitting a minion. Predator gave bonuses for kills/assists and killing spirit well workers(we'll get there). The beauty of the role system was that it divorced Shapers from positions. One of the worst aspects of League over the years has been that they push certain champions to be played in certain positions. This happened initially with Riven. Its why she had more health regen at level 1 than some characters had at level 18. Its inelegant. They have improved somewhat with the Hunter's Machete and Sightstone and support items, but the Role system is a far better execution since it costs no in game currency. Your options of items are not artificially limited by the design of the jungle specific items. You can do what ever you want. The roles defined how you many money, not who got money. Your Gladiators generally wound up with gold but it wasn't until late game that they really pulled ahead since Hunters and Tacticians were pulled away from their revenue streams. Shapers were not pinned to a role either. I played Basko primarily as a Hunter but in spots could play him as a Gladiator or a Tactician. Ashabelle was another favorite and she could Mage Hunter really effectively. She was also a premier Gladiator and solid tactician. Positions were interchangeable to a much greater degree than in other mobas due to the role system. Sure there were Shapers that you expected to see played one way, but doing things outside the box wasn't unusual, especially since...

Two to Tango
There were no solo lanes in DG. The center lane was removed and the two lanes were brought closer together. This is a huge change to the structure of the map we've all agreed on. The center of the map had the primary objective of the game planted smack dab in the middle of everything. It was called Parasite and it was like Baron + Inhibitor rolled into one. This is perhaps the most radical departure from the standard moba, but its the one that was the most impactful. The center of the map became the most contested area, which also meant it was equidistant from both lanes and both jungles. Fights naturally involved more of both teams since its was easier to get there in time to do something. The removal of the center lane also meant that the remaining lanes were duo lanes. There were no solo lanes in the game. This to me was the heart of the game. Even when bad match ups existed they were covered by lane partners to an extent. People could get away with a bit more since they didn't have to play Malzahar into Mordekaiser or Garen into Teemo. Sure, people could still botch it, but it wasn't nearly as harsh an experience. And speaking of experience, because the lanes were even, the only people that pulled ahead on levels were the junglers, and then only for the first clear or so since they had to become more and more involved in the game as time went on. They did have to pick up the equivalent of Smite but....

Spells to go around
The spellbook was a completely different animal to Summoner Spells. Summoner spells are chosen before the game and basically you only get to choose one since the game is built around flash existing. Dota has no spell system but their myriad activated items accomplish a similar purpose. The Spellbook was a selection of Summoner Spell like abilities that were available to each Shaper and were learned inside the game. Also, you ended up with three of them, there were more to choose from, and you could sell them back for a decently steep cost. There was Vanquish which is a neutral monster nuke, but you could eventually sell it back if so inclined. This meant that you could shift your spells to a more appropriate setup on the fly if needed. You learned the new spell at 10 and 20. You go to level 20 in the game, which isn't a big shift, but it does satisfy a certain part of my brain that likes increments of five.  Speaking of being...

Statisfied
The game homogenized a whole mess of stats. Attack Damage and Ability Power were consolidated into Power, which scaled the damage of your abilities and auto-attacks. Movement Speed, Attack Speed, and Cooldown Reduction were all compressed into a stat called Haste. Lifesteal applied to all damage done by your Shaper. This was another huge shift, and played really well. It let them make great items since they didn't have to worry about stats being unusable for half their characters. They didn't need to make a Frozen Mallet + Rylei's Crystal Scepter. With less redundant items and more homogenized stats, each item felt different. There were also no disparate parts. Items upgraded linearly from tier 1 to 2 to 3, and all tier three items cost about 3k gold. The items were named after various vitality's. The Shaper were connected to a Spirit, such as the Spirit of Rage. So their items were named things like Rage, Corruption, Valor, etc. There were six base items, one for each primary stat. The six base items branched into several tier 2 items, which then branched into tier three items. This gave you a significant amount of flexibility in your build order. Of particular note is the Haste stat which allows you to be permanently faster than other characters. In other games, they use boots to increase your movement speed, but all of the boots give essentially the same movement speed boost, so a character with a higher base move speed will always be faster than a character with a lower base movement speed. Everything evens out with a boots movement system, the only thing that matters is the timing of the purchase. With the Haste stat you could change the speed dynamic between two Shapers permanently.  Speaking of dynamic relationships...

Lore is Core
Dawngate is unique among mobas in having a dynamic, integrated lore system. The characters received their powers by bonding with Spirits and getting the ability to Shape the world around them. There was a three day a week webcomic that showed you the Shapers living their lives in the world. It spawned unique voice lines and periodically had votes on the direction the community wanted the lore to go. Do we want Zeri to turn Kahgen in or help him sneak out of the city? The choice resulted in a Bandit skin for Zeri, and would likely have gotten her a Virtuoso skin if she had turned Kahgen into Renzo. It was truly alive and vibrant in a way that LoL has never gotten, and other mobas don't even try. It involved the community, and it connected everyone because it hooked lore into the gameplay without needing to do anything obnoxious to accomplish its goal.

That's about all I have to say on the topic other than Waystone Games went to great efforts to connect with its community. The game was growing, with a progression patch that would do wonders to alleviate some peoples issues with the game, which wasn't perfect. DG was just better than everything else.