I’d like to talk to you about MOBA’s – For those who don’t know, M.O.B.A. stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena; within this small post, I’ll be diving into the issue of saltiness or anger within the MOBA community. In a future video I plan to make, I’ll be diving into the mechanics of MOBAs, and how the nature of them works well in competitive scenes, so keep an eye out for that soon!

For myself, I feel the closest comparison to playing a MOBA, oddly enough, is playing a game of basketball. You go out with 4 other people, and do your best! Maybe you know your teammates and the plays they favour, or perhaps they’re complete strangers and you try to read their body language to see if you can assist them…Win or lose hopefully all of you are having fun.

So this is where the analogy breaks down – You wouldn’t, when playing basketball, turn to your teammate suddenly, and shout in their face about a mis-play. Don’t get me wrong, I get just as angry as the next guy when someone does something that I think is monumentally foolish, however what’s important is to put it in context. It’s just a game, so let’s just let it go! We all want to feel like a crusader, walking down lane and cutting swathes through our enemies, but if someone messes up and you die as a result, you are not going to improve their ability to play by filling the chat log with a flurry of insults. Maybe some advice might suffice, like “Hey be careful you over extended :-)”; you’d be surprised how much you can convey with just a smiley face.

You’re saying “I understand you didn’t mean to leave me open to the enemy team and cause my death. I know that you will try harder next time. Let’s band together as a team and fight!” Whereas if you just insult them all they hear is “I’m not going to help you, I’m going to do my own thing and you can die in lane I don’t care.”

…That’s not really expressing the spirit of team work, is it?

That’s what MOBA’s are at the heart of them; team work. You get to band together with others and clean up. I love it, especially where in MOBA’s such as Heroes of the Storm and Awesomenauts, when your team and you gain experience at an even rate. When one player does well, the whole team shares in the rewards, each playing their part in the victory – A healthy, co-operative team is a winning team!

That’s why I love them; bringing people together in the spirit of competition and good sportsmanship. Let’s not ruin that great fun with bitterness and insults.

Play well and have a good game! See you online!

Keljorn Ironfist