Unfinished: EX: Paragon 08/23/2016

I may give this a shot, especially because there's a "VS AI" mode and it's free.

Man. Remember Monday Night Combat? That game was a shooter with MOBA stuff in it, and it was awesome. I was so bummed when Super Monday Night Combat ended up being vastly more MOBA-ish than shooter-ish. Sucked all the fun right out of that game.

That first game, though. That's what I wish Paragon was. On one hand, this looks like the MOBA I'd get into if I wanted to play a MOBA, because that arcane point-and-click "this is a holdover from when this was a Warcraft 3 mod" control scheme is one of my biggest barriers. But on the other hand, I hate all the other arcane bullshit about MOBAs, like the last-hits, and the jungling, and the carries, and especially the time commitment. It's not for me, and I'm fairly convinced it never will be.

Why can't I just have a Monday Night Combat 2? That shit was so rad.

@higsian: At this point it's strange. We've reached the "post-moba bandwagon" period, where most of the mobas that were in development have fizzled out and everyone seems to have just settled into the popular ones they like, such as LoL, Dota, Smite or HotS. EA canceled theirs while it was still in beta, same with that one DC was making.

It's weird to see a new moba in development today, especially one that isn't trying to be some kind of mass appeal, simplified hybrid like Battleborne.

Really, Jif?

I haven't played this since the alpha started last year. It was fun, but definitely flawed - the progression was poor and the matches were way to long. It sounds like they fixed some of these issues, so I will give it another shot.

Giraffical interchange format

I played in the early online tests and enjoyed the actual gameplay quite a bit, but that fucking awful card system is a guaranteed way to make me never want to play your game again. It is pretty much the antithesis of competitive. All of the supposed problems it "solves" could be done significantly better without it. It's obviously just there because cards are hot right now and people are trying to force them into everything, regardless of whether they make sense.

Why in the flying fuck did they put 'last hitting' in the game? I doubt they are gonna be stealing away any dedicated DOTA or LoL players.

Character designs look sweet. I thought this was a shooter.

Those character designs are some of the coolest I've ever seen. I don't even play MOBAs, but I'm going to give this a try just for those character designs.

This demo really could have benefited from not picking a support character. I was more interested in seeing how the shooting looked...

Never played a MOBA before and expected this to be complicated and not fun but it's fairly easy to jump in. It's hard to justify playing long matches unless you are with friends though. It's hard to show this game off without the communication and variation of classes/characters.

a shooter MOBA might be fun (though i think battleborn may be that, urm...). i also wish someone did a shooter monster hunter type game.

like others i like the look of this game but the same old moba gameplay turns me off, mostly cause you can't jump in and play one of these things with randoms without being eviscerated for your playing ability. smite may actually be more my speed, or maybe ill go back to heroes of the swarm, er, storm.

I can't wait to make animated Jifs...uninstalled.

Looks nice, but probably comes a few years too late. I don't see a market for Paragon between Dota, LoL, Hots and Smite.

@kjebka: more card packs, eh.

@mofoless: See when he threw his drumstick? The shooting looks like that but with a gun. The pace of this game is incredibly plodding. It is the most Chinese Dota since Chinese Dota.

As others have said, the character models look fantastic, but what they're saying about how LoL and Dota have great CGI videos that show dramatic action and then you get to slow paced top down control, this is totally the same but instead of top down it's slow plodding over the shoulder. In fact I think this is even slower because it takes more time to place and AoE with a thumbstick than it is with a mouse.

Fortnite is only partially a Minecraft me-too, there's a lot of other stuff in it combined with that.

my mistake thanks for correcting me

Maybe I'll give this another try, I couldn't finish a game when I played it in alpha because it would crash and it's come a long way, it looks gorgeous.

I'll definitely be giving this game a try, but only when it's "finished"

Grux seems like the kind of thing Kratos kills in GoW but apparently he's such a big fan he wanted to look like him as well.

The character art is great but this game is about twice as MOBA as I'd want it to be. Almost feels out of place.

Wow, why would they pick a support hero and then proceed to farm creeps after saying that you want to be the most action-based MOBA out there? I get that you want to showcase the new hero, but to a wide audience it seems like a bad way to show your game.

As a dota player i would be interested in a more casual brawling game where people jump around with swords while other players shoot. However, by playing so close to the rules of Dota, they have to offer something that can compete with Dota. And i'm not convinced that Paragon has that.

Like the card system presents a design dilemma. Unless you pay money, you won't have access to all the cards. Which means that either there are cards that you can't counter without putting money in, or all cards are stat upgrades / lifesteal instead of having interesting actives (Evasion, spawn illusions, drain mana, see invisible enemies, blink around the map). In dota, if someone builds an item that makes him invisible, you need to be able to buy one of the items that gives you vision of invisible units. Since you can't expect the player to have access to a particular item in Paragon, trying to have wild items like dota would lead to huge imbalances. So as developer, you have a choice to make. Do i make a balanced game with generic cards, or do i put wilder cards in the game, at the cost of people who don't have all the cards unlocked? The same problem arises with the abilities. What if you give a hero the ability to be invisible, but can't guarantee that the players have a card that can solve that problem?

Huge props for the characters though, they all look sharp and they don't fall in the trap of emulating existing LOL & Dota heroes (lady with bow, big guy with hook , monkey king etc.). Although the description of the new hero seems very similar to wraith king (2 buttons, ult = reincarnate). But it's definitly wise to create heroes that appeal to multiple playstyles. As a support, there are times that i get huge enjoyment for pulling off a crazy save on my carry , who then gets to destroy the enemy. Other times, i just want to be the tricky guy that is constantly weaving in and out of fights. Both are totally different experiences.

I could see this being a good contender to Smite . I played a few matches of that out of curiousity, and this seems just better made. However, i wished that in 33 minutes of gameplay, we would have at least seen 1 teamfight. No one wants to see someone sitting in the middle of the map to hit creeps. Even in dota, you can pick a hero that roams around from the start and get action going. Or you pick a hero like Lina or Death Prophet so that you're starting the action within 6 minutes of starting the game.

I wonder if the lack of being able to teleport to a tower decreases the amount of teamfights that happen. The map seems big enough that it takes quite a while before you're able to all gather at the same spot to defend an objective together.

When i think about what made me want to play Dota, i think about seeing sand king, earthshaker and enigma combo their spells in a teamfight. Not seeing an antimage have 100 last hits in the first 10 minutes.

This looks interesting to me but that was kind of a brutal demo. To pair that nice, but very marketer sounding guy's long-winded talks with that slow ass character & gameplay was a bad decision. Character art is great in any case.

@themasterds: I agree with you that HotS is the best. After watching this I started downloading Paragon, then watched the tutorial videos for their heroes... and then cancelled the install. They really needed to do something new with the mechanics.

Kudos on having a REAL beta. I'm so sick of the marketing B.S.

I downloaded the game this morning, had maybe 6 solo vs AI games (just over two hours of in-match time), and have unlocked all the characters. It's a ramp just long enough to keep you from getting to the weird stuff immediately.

EDIT: just noticed some folks had replied to you already. oh well!

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It looks pretty good. Feels pretty great on the controller, but it only has Playstation button icons and, ultimately, mouse and keyboard are still superior.

I haven't done any pvp yet, but I think the video may have come off dull just because it was solo vs ai. The AI is dumb; the other team dies with regularity and I'm not convinced your team couldn't win without you. An all-player match ought to fix all of that.

I like the card system, I like that it doesn't have a screwy, exploitative f2p economy, and I like that looking at this game - particularly heroes like Greystone - makes me think of the character design of UT through it's history. I don't know if it will have legs, but I'll keep messing with it, for sure.

How are you doing sir?

Jeff's level of professionalism in EXs always feels so strange and fake to me. No offense, but I think they should rename "EX" to "AWK" for awkward. Since we all know the "EX" means get ready to watch people awkwardly pretend to be adults for an hour or so. LOL

Edit:

Many people here might not care for it, but I found the discussion between Jeff, Brad & Steve about player expectations and the strengths and weaknesses of making a third-person MOBA very interesting.

I like this game. I just need them to make some more advances in their overall systems before I can really dig into it deeper.

All of the heroes look like they were taken from the box of a video card.

1. For all their talk of more actiony game and making a moba feel like the cinematics, holy shit does it look just like a bog standard moba, except from a 3rd person perspective, which actually just makes the action looks and feel even slower then in a standard moba. Hots, Dota and LoL all look and feel faster paced and more active then what they demo'd here.

2. Ironically if you (like Jeff) wanted a shooter with moba elements rather then a moba with third person "shooting" elements, Battleborn is exactly that, most characers shoot and play like a shooter (ala Borderlands)

3. One hour long games are not a selling point anymore. Even traditional mobas have long since tried to move away from that.

4. Boy those hits from characters on creeps look anemic.

5. Character models do look good, but so far this seems to be the only significant selling point? (and that its a fully featured f2p moba on consoles)

Eh? This doesn't look actiony at all. This is just a straight up MOBA (and a somewhat slow paced one at that from the looks of it) except it's in third person. That seems to be the only significant change I can spot: the camera view. I agree the characters look rad, but apart from that it just doesn't look unique at all.

Looks like it will never be finished now