Escapist: How is Paragon (the MOBA, not me personally)?

[Paragon Fury]

So I've been looking for a new MOBA to pass the time with when I'm not playing my usual FPS or RPG fare and I've been looking at Paragon. While I enjoyed DotA 2, I never really got too into it, and Heroes of the Storm was just...bad. I liked League of Legends for a time, but I finally grew tired of Riot's crap and the "No more SoloQ ever" and some of their design decisions finally drove me away.

Paragon looks like it could be interesting, and it's made by EPIC who have a fairly good history. How has the Escapist's experience with it been?

And for comparison for gameplay, I preferred to play in other MOBAs characters like Dragon Knight, Crystal Maiden, Axe, Shyvana, Sona, Ahri and Taliyah.

 

[meiam]

It's decent but imo nothing special. Right now it's extremely close to traditional moba, the only big difference aside form the 3rd person is that if you don't attack get attacked for 5 sec you go into travel mode where you go at double speed, nice to move around, but as a lot of problem so there going to replace it by something which they didn't yet announced last I played. There's also a little bit of 3D environment (so you can attack from a ledge and stuff like that, but not much.

The character variety is a bit low and most are very vanilla, but there adding new one fairly fast.

The item are a bit underwhelming, you can only use item you've randomly obtain from loot pack you can buy with in-game currency (well out of game, so you make deck of item before you start a match and your stuck with these) and most are just stats buff, very few interesting ability and those are the rarest item.

But yeah, if you ever though "I'd like to play LoL, but 3rd person" its pretty much that. No glowing recommendation but not bad.

 

[sXeth]

Its essentially the same as most MOBA's, aside from the third-person over-shoulder view. And the (mainly) sci-fi orientation vs the generally fantasy based heroes in others. (Though there are several "space-fantasy types, and a couple that seem straight fantasy)

The big alterations are the super-speed mode you start in/go into after 5 seconds of non-combat. Which they've gone back and forth on whether they're removing or altering it.

The "Amber" currency to buy your upgrade cards can be obtained via kills as per traditional MOBA, or setting up and retrieving from Harvesters over time. So there's a bit of an extra element in establishing control of those and maintaining it. PArticularly for your junglers.

The Card system is probably the main thing that you'll hitch on. Rather then being able to buy whatever from the available items over a match, you have to use a deck of cards you choose at the start of the match. You can have up to six cards total. There are "Equipment" cards, which are your base items (also potions and the like), then "upgrade" cards. You can put up to 6 upgrade cards on an item, which generally increase its base stats, and usually unlocks a final bonus after you complete the cards upgrades (at least 3 to do so). Potions and stuff can't carry upgrades though.

Outside of premade basic starting decks (which range from functional at best, to useless for more complex heroes), you get new cards available by levelling up your account/hero/weekly challenges/daily chests/etc. Since the cards are mainly RNG packs though, its possible you may find yourself lacking a key card that would give you an advantage with a specific hero. The cards have different amber costs to deploy in game, and there's not really any ultra-potent cards that negate skill, but there is that tiny bit of potential pay-to-win going on where someone who's shelled out cash to get more card packs then you may have a better set of available tools.

Its also still in beta, and there's obvious balancing issues as a result. Matchmaking seems significantly suspect, and there's no separate ranked mode (or any alternate modes like Arena or smaller then 5v5)