Every developer is making or at least considering to make their version of Riot’s e-sport sensationLeague of Legends  (LoL).  Fates Forever (FF) isHammer & Chisel’s attempt to take their piece of the market. What makes FF stand out is that it’s a tablet only multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) going after players that are either new to the genre or lapsed from super competitive browser versions.

Fates Forever is a beautiful game that takes most out of your latest iPad. Sadly, under the fine looks players will not discover a competitive hero brawler with a set of highly diverse champions to play and master. Instead, they’ll find a game that is simple to get into but offers little depth or long-term value.

From a business perspective, FF is a bust and its unsuccessful launch may leave investors and execs cautious about the potential of tablet MOBAs. The goal of this post is to break down why Fates Forever falls short. Personally, I believe that tablet gaming will be dominated by core multiplayer games in the very near future. These games just need to be designed for that audience.
 

Gameplay – great design held back by shaky controls

Playing an MOBA is like playing an EA sports game, like FIFA. Each player has a dedicated position on the squad. A team wins when every player sticks to that role and plays as a team.

Going rogue almost certainly ensures defeat (or a quick death at least). It’s like in FIFA if you play as a striker you can’t run after the ball. You need to stay close to the offside line and wait for that one golden through pass and score. In a sports games, it’s self-explanatory how one should play as a goalie, striker or a midfielder. In MOBAs these different roles aren’t inherently clear - leading to new players feeling frustrated and quitting the game.
 

Character Design

FF takes an interesting approach to improve accessibility by choosing an animal theme. In a way it makes sense. As a noob to MOBA’s I can conclude that a fox with a bow is likely fast but weak character that shoots from range, while a snail with a magic rod is most likely slow and will slow enemies down with its spells. The approachability of the characters makes it easier to understand what position they play in the field. I’m also likely to try several characters out as I can guess how to play them. This isn’t the case with many browser MOBAs, where the heroes’ visuals often don’t communicate how a player should play them – or the complexity of the characters is so deep that visual communication is often not a solution.

Characters in Fates Forever are charming and beautifully made. They also do a great job in visually communicating the characteristic of each champion. I mean everyone knows how to play with a fox carrying a bow.

FF does a solid job in character design and balancing. The game is accessible without being a dumbed down version of a hero brawler. Due to clear visual cues and very straightforward character skills, players quickly figure out how to play each character.

After hours upon hours of gameplay, what I feel is missing are the difficult characters. You know, the characters that no one really wants to play with because of their very unique skills that are hard to master. But they are also the heroes that turn into unstoppable forces in the hands of a skillful player who is supported by a good team.
 

Map Design

Map design and character balancing are the basic design pillars of any MOBA. In general, compact maps enable short sessions but sacrifice the strategic gameplay, while large maps open up game design to long sessions as well as highly specialized characters.

Maps in Fates Forever are not only stunning but also very well designed offering multiple strategies to for a player to employ.

FF offers (only) one beautiful three-on-three two-lane map with a jungle in between, which in my mind is perfectly balanced for a tablet experience. The map is small enough to ensure constant action and shorter sessions - battles in FF take around 20 minutes, which is roughly a half of what they last in DOTA2 or LOL. At the same time the map is large enough to offer variety for tactical gameplay and allow different characters without going over the board with specialization.
 

Controls

While the map and character designs are spot on for a wide audience, FF falls short by forcing players to use gesture based controls even when tap-for-action would be a far better solution. Don’t get me wrong; I love some gesture-controlled skills in FF. For example, when playing with Dim, a fire mage character, the player drags a finger over the game board setting it into a blaze that burns all the characters in the area. At the same time, dragging your finger to shoot a fireball at an opponent doesn’t make sense, since the basic attack is simply to tap on the target to engage.

Most of the gesture controls in Fates Forever are frustrating but some are exceptionally great.

For example, Dim, a fire mage, sets the earth on fire accruing to a path drawn by a player. Hero brawlers are so great because they are competitive player versus player games where teamwork, knowledge, and skills are the keys to victory. Sadly, due to the overzealous use of gesture controls in FF, the gameplay takes a deep dive when the battle heats up. Trying to hit another player with a gesture based skill shots while moving the character (aka kiting) becomes quickly impossible, which gives an advantage to characters with skills that don’t require gestures.

Browser MOBAs have solved this with speed controls, which allow players to quickly fire away different skills on the go. Personally, I think the guys at Hammer & Chisel should revise whether it makes sense to have 90% of the skills to be gesture controlled.
 

Retention 

MOBAs, as any competitive games, retain players by encouraging them to master their skills and win matches. Another key retention driver in MOBAs is the champion cycle that I’ll discuss further in the monetization part of this post. In addition to the traditional master-by-playing and character retention, FF deploys four other key progress mechanics to drive engagement.

The welcome screen in Fates Forever is simply overwhelming as it attacks players with all the info in the game from leaderboards to daily quests and results from last battles. But there are some good things to it as well - like the integrated community bar leading to chat.

Experience Points

A player earns XP for every completed match. The amount of earned XP depends on the player’s performance in the match. With every level up a player unlocks a new Relic – an item, which they can equip to boost their performance in the battle. For example, Safeguard Relic, when activated, significantly reduces the amount of damage a hero takes a few seconds. A player can choose only one Relic per match.

Soft Currency

For every completed match, a player also earns Ore, which is the soft currency in FF. Ore is consumed to purchase new playable characters. How much a player earns Ore depends on the player’s performance in a match.

Win or lose the amount of soft currency player gets is pretty much the same. Very socialist reward system. 

Overall, Ore is quite unbalanced in FF. Firstly; the amount of earned Ore fluctuates very little. The reward is pretty much the same whether a player ends up dominating in the match or simply hangs out till the battle ends. This really kills the feeling of reward after a successful match. Secondly, the prices for each character vary significantly, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. One logical way is to price the hardest characters with the highest price so that new players won’t accidentally buy them.

This will offer the most accessible characters at inviting prices, supporting the learning of new players.

Daily Quests

Much like in Hearthstone, FF gives player’s “daily quests”. But unlike in Hearthstone, FF’s quests are poorly balanced and can be very frustrating for non-paying users. For example, a friend of mine, who (unlike me) hasn’t bought all of the characters, gets quests that he can complete only with locked characters. In other words, he should buy a character to complete a quest that will give him soft currency so he can purchase characters. Yes, doesn’t make any sense at all.

Character XP

In addition to the general XP bar, which unlocks Relics, there is also an XP bar for each of the characters. Personally, I don’t know what’s the benefit of increasing your character level. Overall FF’s UI is missing many tooltips and instructions, which lead to player confusion. The character XP bar is a perfect example of a feature that desperately needs a toolbar.

Overall the retention mechanics in FF are solid on paper but lack intensity due to average implementation. There are no events, competitions, guilds or leagues. There’s a global weekly leaderboard, which doesn’t promise any awards for winners. And as stated before, there’s no difference between losing and winning, which simply leads to retention being based on the champion cycle.
 

Social 

Playing with and against other players is what makes MOBAs fun and addicting. There’s nothing like teaming up with other players and beating the opposing team by outwitting and outplaying the competition. Social is simply crucial for the success of the game. Player acquisition on tablets is extremely expensive, which puts the focus on the creativity of the team to come up with integrated and meaningful social features that help to draw new players to the game.  

Party Play

The key selling argument for a tablet hero brawler is the easiness to set up a good old LAN-party. Everyone has an iPad. It weighs practically nothing and is as portable as a magazine. These hardware characteristics make it easy for players to meet up and start a game together.

Starting a game with friends is super easy. Tap on Party button, pick a friend, press play and start having some really fun time!

FF makes the most out of team play. Adding players is extremely easy and starting a game together is straightforward. But most importantly, playing together with a friend or two is simply a lot of fun. It starts off with clear and calm communication and culminates in screaming, shouting and high-fiving as you team up and break down the competition on your route to flawless victory.

In-game Communications

If you’ve played DOTA2 or LOL you’ve probably experienced the offensive and often racial language from co-players taunting you for every mistake you make. My personal opinion is that mainly kids playing the game use the microphone and it offers little gameplay value while actually decreasing the gameplay experience. Because of this, I don’t really understand why FF has added the microphone feature to the game. Theoretically, it’s great but in practice it sucks. I’m sure that’s why Hearthstone doesn’t use the microphone.

The main in-game communication tool in MOBAs in the ping message system, which allows players to quickly choose and send a pre-written messages to the team. Fast messages like “Follow Me”, “Help!”, “Defend!” are enough to work as a team in the heat of the battle. FF badly lacks this feature, which easily leads to un-collaborative sessions.

No Guilds, No Events

Finally what really supercharges social in MOBAs are the team-based competitions and events. FF doesn’t have any guilds or events (yet) and thus the game lacks social pressure, which draws players back to the game. For example, if I’d be a part of a team and there would be a competition going on, I’d make sure to rack up as many wins as possible during the short period of time.
 

Monetization 

Let's be clear here, apart from Riot’s League of Legends (LoL), a five years old game that makes over 600 million dollars a year, nobody else comes even close. Valve’sDotA2, which is regarded as the runner-up in the genre, made only around80 millions in 2013. Think about what the 5th or 10th most played MOBA makes a year.

How League of Legends monetizes

To understand better how MOBAs monetize one should take a glance at the true master of the genre that is incredibly successful - League of Legends (LoL).

The backbone on monetization in LoL is the character rotation system, which gives players access to only a fraction of characters at a time. Each week Riot cycles a new selection of champions for players to try and locks the champions player learned to play with last week. This weekly cycle drives retention and engagement by driving players back to the game to play with a new set of characters every week. It’s also a great driver for conversion, as players purchase characters they tried last week.

To keep the character rotation model alive through the years, you need to introduce new characters to the game through cadence. As with character rotation, introducing new characters impacts both player experience and monetization as it reforms the balance of this highly competitive game.

League of Legends monetizes through champions. That's why they have lots of them.

New characters enter the game with much anticipation as the game does a great job in community management. Supported by launch hype, Riot skims the player base by always making the new characters extra strong so that the maximum amount of players would purchase the character at the highest price. When the community complains about the overly strong new character, they respond by saying that players just haven't yet learned to play against it - encouraging more purchases as players urge to learn the weaknesses of this new champion. Finally, a good while after launching the new character, Riot tunes it down based on "feedback from the community". Just in time before they introduce a new overly strong character.

In addition to hero rotation and the steady introduction of new characters, League of Legends also monetizes through character skins, which allow players to customize their favorite champions. Also, boosts, such as doubling the value of soft currency earned from each match, are extremely well-selling items in LoL.

How Fates Forever tries to monetize

The bottom line is, FF is not making any revenue. Apple featured the game at launch and that brought them into top 150 grossing list on the iPad, but ever since the game hasn’t made an appearance on the list. With a soft launch period of one whole year, this is a devastating blow for any company, let alone a startup that has all of its eggs in the same basket. Here’s why I think the game is in a downward spiral.

1. Selling Characters

Character rotation is the key driver of monetization in FF. FF also introduces new characters to the game but unlike in LoL they have been very conservative and haven’t used the skimming strategy in conjunction with over-powering the new character.

This is how you destroy retention and monetization. Create a bundle pack that gives players not only current but also the future characters. Not only will you not make any revenue off your most engaged players but you'll also destroy your main progress mechanics - earning soft currency from matches in order to purchase characters.

They’ve also kicked off their global launch with a $20 bundle, which gave players all the existing and upcoming characters. So not only did they cap the maximum revenue of an engaged player to the tiny sum of $20, but they also took away any motivation for monetized players to retain. I mean I already have all the characters so I don’t care about the soft currency I can earn by playing. There are no other progress meters than that so I really don’t need to play that often.

2. Technical Difficulties

Despite spending a year in soft launch, Hammer & Chisel never got their technical performance up to par. On an older iPad mini, the game simply lost its frame rates and crashed when the battles heated up. What that means is that FF is not only limited to iPads, but it can also only serve the top end devices on the market.

3. Lack of Retention

Firstly, missing competitive and social features, such as events and guilds, is in my mind what really hurts retaining players. There’s just no sense of progress for engaged players. Sure, leveling up is ok, but there

Secondly, the first time flow in FF is weak. They’ve taken the 6 battles model that Hearthstone uses so successfully and watered it down to a few boring and restrictive battles. So instead of showcasing the fun of a multiplayer hero brawler, FF just teaches you how to play the game. Personally, I’d re-create the most fun matches player can have with NPC characters in a single player campaign mode.

I’d have players learn the value of teamwork and the role of different characters by playing with bots and NPCs instead of concentrating on teaching what each button does in the game.
 

When Looks are just not the Main Point

Fates Forever is a game that has a lot of great things going for, but it is countered by so many flaws that in the end, the game is a niche product with no commercial success. The game is beautiful and accessible but it does a poor job in engaging players new to multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBA) while simultaneously dropping the ball on players who are familiar with the genre. FF features approachable and visually interesting characters combined with unfitting gesture controls. It is a social competitive game with no social networks or competition. Finally, it’s a polished product that has a confusing UI and poor technical performance on lower-end devices.

Looks are not even close to the priority when making a highly competitive MOBA. Gameplay, balancing, team play, and competition mechanics should be the cornerstones of development. It a sport, not a beauty pageant. 

Although the game is visually stunning, looks are deceiving. Graphics are only one component of a game and time after time great gameplay has proven to be more important than great visuals. FF is a good light version of an MOBA and I suggest to give it a go. But please, don’t judge the genre based on Fates Forever.