EA's moba Dawngate - Closed Beta notes

Had the pleasure of playing in the closed beta last Friday. One of my friends works for EA and got a couple of us keys. Sorry, no screens. Here are a few of my thoughts:

-2 lanes/map: Makes for a more managable situation IMO. The map is somewhat smaller than LoL or Dota2. With everyone being new we didn't see too many junglers, except people at EA that were playing and knew the routes. So most of my games had 3 top, 2 bottom. Makes for more exciting gameplay.

Each team has 2 resource pools. The have workers gathering resources that contribute to your passive money gain. You can kill the enemies workers and slow down their gain. At around the 8min mark the pools unlock and you can take the enemies resource pools. Adds another strategic objective to the game and is really good for getting a gank or two.

Jungle is what you would expect. There are small/ medium camps. Camps that have buffs. A mini boss that gives currency and a boss that gives a serious buff.

In your base, if the enemy kills an inhib they can start fighting your "nexus" which is more like smite in the sense he is a boss with different abilities. He is pretty tough and usually takes the whole team. If enough time elapses, your inhibs respawn and after that your inner turrets respawn. This I really like and feel like will make for exciting long games and comebacks.

-unique mechanics: First off, at the character select screen you can choose your loadout/perks. It is somewhat similar to having already setup rune pages/masteries from LoL. There are quite a few setups and I didn't feel like I was beng pigeon holed.

Everyone gets 3 spells that you pick in game. 1 at lvl 1, 2nd at lvl 10, 3rd at lvl 20. They are what you expect. wither (exhaust), blink (flash), etc.

There are still a few balancing issues with characters but that is to be expected. Not sure if it was intended to be this way but if you are killed early on or leave lane early you are at a major disadvantage and the enemy will snowball hard. The games I played we were either destroyed or destroyed them, not many close games.

Also, everyone gets a ward. It has a cooldown and hotkey assigned. Makes for much better teamwork if you coordinate where to put them.

-Items: The shop setup is really simple. It is two screens, one for all the items, one for consumables. Consumables have their own slots and don't take up room in your inventory.

The main screen has about 8 different items all giving a bonus to one particular attribute (haste, health, damage, etc). When you select one it shows the tier 2 items which involve that particular attribute plus another, then after you select a tier 2 item it shows the legendary items that have the attributes of the t2 items but buffed and with a passive attribute added.

You can sort out items, much like in LoL, by clicking the tick boxes for particular attributes. Very simple, and much easier to navigate IMO. The shop is still lacking a search option but I was told that is coming.


All in all, I am really excited for this to open beta or have extended closed beta, which I was told will be happening in the next month or two. I can see this game really getting some popularity. It was extremely easy to pick up and play if you have played other moba's. If you haven't it only takes a few games and some guidance to get into it.

Forgot to mention: The gameplay is graphically lacking, but that I assume is just because its beta and will get touchups later. After the pregame lobby countdown is up you are in game almost instantaneously. No 10min load screen waiting on kids with wooden computers.