The new End of Nations apparently "hasn't changed as much as it sounds like"
False alarm everyone, ok well maybe its still a mild alarm. The new MOBA iteration of End of Nations is apparently less MOBA than RTS. An interview has surfaced between End of Nations' Executive Producer Scot Lane and RTS Guru. In it Lane makes it very clear that although the game has undergone a genre change, it actually hasn't changed as much as some people feared:
The game hasn't changed as much as it sounds like. We've made the game more hero focused, and the biggest change would be tactical leveling. A big concern we had previously was that battles and tactics didn't really change because everyone was exactly the same at the beginning and end. The addition of tactical leveling opens up lots of different strategies throughout a battle. Combat is very similar but faster, and we've made a lot of changes to the UI. We don't feel we drastically changed the game at its core, we brought what we felt were the best parts up to the surface and removed some stuff that wasn't working.
Like other MOBAs, a "hero" unit will be the center point in End of Nations battles. Some of the heroes themselves may be familiar to players who enjoyed the original rendition of End of Nations as many of the classes have been enhanced to better fit into distinct roles. These heroes can have the usual four abilities/passives like most other MOBAs, but many of their abilities will affect units under a player's control.
The retention of control over a separate set of units is key to distinguishing End of Nations from the rest of the predominantly tri-lane inspired MOBAs. In a separate discussion with PCGamesN, Lane stressed that while End of Nations may also have heroes and abilities that work similar to other MOBAs, the comparison stops there:
In End of Nations, you'll choose which units to bring to the fight and have full control over them in the battle, giving you more control over the tactics used during the map and letting you do more micromanagement, if you choose.
From the sound of things, End of Nations may end up playing similar to Warcraft 3 (sans base building), which also had hero units, but used them in conjunction with an army built to support them.
The RTS Guru interview goes on to detail other EoN changes including adjustments to mods, the removal of Elite Companies and the simplification of unit marks. Now when you purchase a MKI unit, it will automatically improve as if you had purchased a MKII.
With all these not-so-drastic-changes now coming to light are you again looking forward to End of Nations?
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Michael Dunaway has been part of the MMOBomb team for years and has covered practically every major Free-to-Play MMO title since 2009.
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I got the alpha invite too, since i was in the previous alpha of EoN, but the game keeps crashing on me and i stopped trying to play it. I'll give it another try after a patch or two, maybe it will work then.
There's a comment saying "You're stuck with the pre-made squadrons you buy", you're not stuck with anything, there's a tab where you can buy single units and add to the squadron or make your own.
I think most people are judging without really knowing (not here particularly), the game has been playable for only a couple of days and it's still in ALPHA!! They're just talking shit because in F2P games apparently change=bad and it's cool to hate on anything resembling a MOBA,
I think the game is as much a MOBA as my dick is a vagina, (at least if compared with traditional MOBAs) the only game i can think of comparing it too is Airmech, but it's not exactly like it.
I'm gonna keep playing since I already have access, so far I enjoyed the game, but I think it needs to make a couple of changes if it plans on sticking around for a long time or having a large player base.
I tried to play a MOBA game but I never saw the point of it.. It's the most useless genre... I believe 0 AD is much better than MOBA's and 0 AD is still very bad ...
I'm definitely not the only one who thinks this. The very first day, all the chat was filled with was "They scrapped the original version for this...?", and "The previous version was much better then what it is now".
The game has indeed changed, for the better? That's not up to me to decide solely alone, but seeing how they've already lost 25% of their original Alpha testers from the previous version, based on that statistic alone, it's not what the players of End of Nations wanted to see.
End of Nations was a pretty unique, or was going to be (at least) RTS game, now they've pretty much made it garbage. You can no longer call in units, as now you pre-select "Squadrons" and you're stuck with it.
I don't know how they can honestly say it hasn't changed "that" much. End of Nations was previously going to be an RTS based around 50 vs 50 commanders, and now it's 3 vs 3, and 5 vs 5? They've also (not entirely sure as it's still alpha, could change) no more taking over territories, no large scaled maps, etc.
In my personal opinion from being re-invited, it's simply not what it used to be, and couldn't stack in comparison.
Course, the reason it failed before, was due to the arrogant Alpha testers to begin with, and their simple, shallow, and closed minds. So, I'm not shedding a tear over what End of Nations has become.
In the end, It's simply going to bomb again. Course I could be wrong, but, probably not.
Back in testing, Heroes were just overpowered units that were expensive to get. If you didn't play your cards right, you'd likely have nothing but basic units and get destroyed by an opponent's hero-led units. Making Heroes the center of a player's platoon all around will balance that bit out and encourage a much more strategic play style.
But, as I said before, I want to see actual game footage of the game after all these months of silence. I want to see for myself if the general gameplay has changed. I want to know just how similar this Hero mechanic would be the the Warcraft 3 model.
Isn't that the whole concept of a balanced RTS?
If the battles and tactics don't change, maybe you designed your game wrong.