Strife - 2nd gen MOBA

Played a bit, taking a break to eat but I think I'll play some more after, it looks pretty alright. The tutorial was really nice, voiced and shit, was like the dota2 tutorial. The UI is a bit confusing at first but mostly fairly good, not sure where the scoreboard is though if there's one(can see your own stats, don't know about others), might be a key I'll check the bindings. Shop could be bigger, feels a bit too packed with the current size and the amount of filters and shit, however fairly easy and intuitive to use, you either search by name, filter by item type(power, lifesteal, movement etc) or by item category(which is kinda the same but more general, attack items, tank items etc). The courier is a nice addition, less traveling back to base compared to lol(they also can't be killed/are personal, so no dota griefing), consumables having their own item slots so you can always have them+your regular items and it even has "endgame" consumables that cost quite a bit but heal instantly(not a whole lot though but eh), boots also have their own slot and every upgradable boots has an active ability which is nice. In terms of items, it seems to pull more from dota than lol. There's a lot of active items, and a lot of the dota ones, there's a sheepstick, a "blink"(it's boots actually), boots of travel, phase boots, a nuke(also in lol), a shiva(also in lol), some invuln item similar to lol hourglass or whatever it is now since they split it from zhonya like 2years ago when I quit and so on. Many many different actives, a lot of which aren't in lol, so items are more important.

You can also customize the items via out of game ressources you gain from playing matches, haven't looked into it much but the way I undersood it, you don't really make the items much better, however say you combine a +10power and +50health item into something, you can customize it so you use a second +10power item in the recipe, to get additional stats in the item(but it costs more since you still have to buy that +10power item). Looks interesting. You also get pets instead of summoners/runes, pets can be upgraded and you can buy different pets for different roles, they come with 2 actives and 1 passive out of 2 different ones, you get the usual jungler pet, caster pets, tank pet and so on but also for example an assassin pet with a shroud active.

Game itself plays relatively good but very lolish, no turn rate, castpoints/attackpoints looked roughly all the same for every hero I've played, they went with grass instead of shorter vision/complex trees so the map is similar to lol, other than baron and dragon being reversed and I didn't see any buffs but I haven't really done much in the jungle. It seems rax/inihibs don't respawn, but they also don't seem to provide additional creeps, they however reduce the defenses on the throne. Gold is shared in a weird way, you need to last hit but if a teammate last hit, the gold is split(with a bonus to compensate, so like solo creeps a 34g but shared it's 20g each I believe), means supports aren't really supporty since they get a good amount of gold and carries don't really get as much gold. Does mean supports get to last hit in lane though. Don't know if I like it in terms of not farming the carries as much but need to play more.

Skills were very lolish, low cd, low costs, short range(mostly), fairly low damage/cc durations, most of it is skillshots. You also get out of combat increased regen so spamming in lane then hiding for 10secs seems like the way you want to lane.

The Dauntless One_sl said:

Am I just retarded? I couldn't find where to start a game anywhere after the tutorial...

Click to expand...

Well you click Play, select a hero/pet, then Find Match at the bottom right, so I guess retarded might be accurate in this case? ^^

Played a few more games, played the melee assassins or whatever they are, they weren't very tanky but also kinda had shit damage so was pretty bad. In retrospect I'd probably change some stuff like items, blink boots seem vital to get out of shit especially the one with the backstab since you don't have a blink/charge, just a blink strike so you can't get out of shit. The other one I played with a sword and a lot of short cooldown(kinda like Riven) was better, felt tankier, his ult is a nice aoe CC and he gets 2 movement skills with a non targetted charge(so can use it to escape as well) and a short movement speed burst, felt much stronger. I think the backstab guy maybe I need more damage items the damage looked like shit considering the squishiness and the lack of sustain, it's not like kat or akali in lol terms where you blow all your shit, kill a guy and it instantly reset most of your shit so you can kill another etc. Or maybe it is but need better gear, hard to tell.

Also inhibs/rax look kinda shitty. In LoL and Dota both, when you take a lane you get a huge momentum in terms of pushing due to that lane constantly pushing in, but as far as I can tell this doesn't happen here so it feels fairly pointless other than the massive gold boost(which I guess is something, it's like 1200g per person I think so it's like really a lot). Not sure I like that.

The F2P aspect I also don't know, not too sure what you can buy with gems other than additional chests and skins/colors. I won all my games and opened 4-5star chests everytime and they seem to yield about 5-7 of the crafting thing and pet food and 2-3 of the other rarer crafting shit(for upgrades), you need 40pet food to increase 1lvl, 9lvls per pet and there's like 7pets, that's a lot of grinding, I wonder if you can unlock them otherwise. At least heroes are free, for now, not sure what they'll go with eventually.

That's the biggest downside though, early beta and all but basically there's not enough heroes obviously, they need like 3-4times what they have now for the game to be interesting.

Anyway fairly decent game, bit surprised since I expected a lot worse. It is done by S2 though apparently(found out when I logged on the forums) which I guess makes sense, they had decent expertise from HoN. They're already planning for replays, ingame guides like dota, that kind of stuff, it feels like a serious game even though I don't know about it standing a chance against lol or dota, but it might get a decent enough following kinda like Smite.