During PAX East I ran into a lot of developers, community managers and marketing people that are all vying to be the next big MOBA. From Turbine’s Infinite Crisis to a Russian entry in Prime World to the growing community behind SMITE or Strife, the second attempt from S2 Games: everyone of these is hoping to pull you into their battle arena. And yet, they can’t possibly all be the next League of Legends.
Keeping that in mind, I asked each and every person exactly what sets their title apart. What’s the differentiation? Why move from DOTA 2 or some other massively established title to yours? What’s the hook? Even though this is a question they should have been prepared for many failed to respond with anything strong.
Cardell Kerr, the Creative Director for Infinite Crisis, has taken the issue to heart and is going to do something about it. In short, his lengthy explanation to the community will see Turbine dramatically alter the development plan that we recently discussed.
- Balance updates are to come roughly monthly.
- Technical patches will be released alongside balance updates in the hopes of reducing crashes (thus AFKs)
- Champions development will continue, but no new champions will be released until September.
- Developer presence on the forum will increase
In the meantime, the developer will focus its efforts on improving the new player experience, including improving the basic tutorial and user interface functionality to make sure the opening hours are fun and easy to grasp. All these is scheduled for the next major patch coming this September. Wonder if that release date will hold.
It’s a smart move to make sure you capture people as soon as they stick their toes in the water with so much noise in the genre.