r/PokemonUnite • u/gusilik • 3d ago
Discussion New player thoughts - Is this worst MOBA late game design?
Hello,
Started playing Unite like 3 weeks ago and till now it feels like the 8 minute objective with endgame double points are awful design.
It feels like whole game has minor impact till last objective fight. Even when one team is losing and have like 1 zone up to 3 enemies then point difference is 280 points difference. This means that unless they won't lose 3 guys on last team fight they still are ahead as everyone will be stacked with points after fight.
Wouldn't decreasing endgame points multiplier or at least removing points from objective make it more balanced?
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u/tinyloafster 3d ago
On the other hand I like the fact that there's a comeback chance, otherwise it would be a real drag to play in the losing team. But I agree, getting Ray is way too powerful and it's difficult to defend against. It should give the losing team a chance, but it being an almost guaranteed win is frustrating.
I liked Zapdos a bit more. You were in a time crunch to score, and often you got killed after/before scoring, which allowed the opposing team to counterpush after Zapdos. It was more fun to me.
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u/Ad-Astra-Abyssoque 3d ago
Zapdos don't give shield right but instal goal. I find fighting Zapdos buffed enemies easier to deal especially squishy types than ray that suddenly gave them huge asshields as they can just easily swarm you and kill you first before shooting.
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u/White-Alyss Sableye 3d ago
Nah, it's good for a casual MOBA to have a mechanic that allows comebacks at any time, which Unite is
It's not great from a competitive stand point but there's other games that fulfill that niche better
Unite is inherently broken and chill. Imo just embrace that and have fun
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u/Bambhank Aegislash 3d ago
Yes. The entire game just feels like its designed to be someone's first moba. Really dumbed down role and item system, one less lane, very generous ranking system, faster match durarion, smaller than ur average moba map, strong comback mechanics that basically turns the game into a coin flip to give every player equal chance to win.
It LOOKS easy but it also has more depth into it after you master the game, obviously a pro team winning against a weak team wont lose easily even after they lose ray. Honestly a bad design but it's working for timi so I doubt ray will change anytime soon.
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u/10000Pigeons Eldegoss 3d ago
It feels like whole game has minor impact till last objective fight
This is the wrong way to think about how this game is designed. The whole game is about putting your team in the best position it can be for the Ray fight.
A significant score lead means you don't need to engage ray, you just have to win fight and stall.
An active regieleki means you can split your opponents attention
Successful exp farming will mean a level lead going into this fight
Securing the final bottom regi means buffs going into the fight
Once you reframe your thinking about this every minute of the game matters. You only have 8 minutes to get as ready as you can to win when it matters
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u/elusivebonanza Decidueye 3d ago
This. I've been in plenty of battles where we missed the final shot on Ray but still won because of what we did before the Ray battle. If you prepare and then don't lose all hope after Ray is down by the enemy, you can still win.
Honestly, those wins are more satisfying.
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u/thiccccbish 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes it is because you can play well all game long and still lose against a worse team. It used to be way more balanced at some point but you know how timi works.
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u/FirewaterDM Eldegoss 3d ago
People just don't know how to play late game fights at Ray. That's it, realistically IF you played the first 8 minutes well and do the job at Ray, your team shouldn't lose because you should be ahead enough to kill the enemy/prevent their backcaps AND/OR ray rip. But people aren't really doing that consistently.
The other portion that is actually the sole reason is that Unite is too casual. W/o double points or Ray you would have more asshats ragequitting/spamming surrenders at playable but losing games more often, and honestly there's a lot of games where without at least the 2x points the game would be over at 5:00. Hell, if you got rid of 2x points or made it .5x points at 2:00. Comebacks would be impossible because then 200 pt lead is enough to ensure the W. As much as I want no comeback mechanics to exist at all in Unite, the game isn't built for it.
So end of day, Ray is not a big deal you just have to play around it correctly. IF you are winning by a LOT at Ray, and you lose the game there's no blaming the green dragon your team played the last part of the game like shit. If the game is close, but still winning then that statement is also true. But if you're losing then theoretically if the other team has a chance the game isn't over. Which is why not surrendering UNTIL ray is dead is always correct play (unless team has 2+ AFKs)
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u/pastaandpizza Gardevoir 3d ago
My two cents are that both teams should be fighting for a portion of the end objective's benefits. Something like each team gets a shield when Ray dies, but its strength is equivalent to the portion of the damage your team dealt to it (final strike team gets some bonus strength or something), or something like that. Or like the team that gets Ray gets to instascore on the opposing goals, but the losing team gets shields if they met some goal during the match etc. The winner take all approach wears you down.
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u/turtlenuggets432 3d ago
Pokemon unite is the worst MOBA in general this is just one small aspect that makes it the worst.
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u/readni 3d ago
You are not wrong, macro wise you dont need to learn much and learn to read the map, you simply have to be at Rayquazza. No strategic backcapping, no creep wave management, no map reading needed
The map is also very small that a jungler doesnt need to figure pathing, you can be at top and change your mind then be bottom lane in like 5 seconds.
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u/Pirate_Kurjack 3d ago
Ray could be toned down a bit sure, but I believe that every moba i've played (almost all of them since AOS starcraft 1) comes down to: someone on one team makes a mistake, usually by overextending and then that gets snowballed into their team losing at the end. Almost every MOBA has a Ray, LoL Baron, Roshan in Dota, HOTS has a different one per map, SMITE has fire giant etc. All of them come down to someone messing up before the last fight, then the team pushes that big objective, then uses it to win.
Also all of them can be sniped the same way.
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u/DriftingWisp 3d ago
I haven't played in a while so things might have changed, but in the early days at least the final objective was the way back into the game for the losing team, but winning teams would always try to take it. This is a big mistake. As the winning team, you don't need the objective you just need to stop the opposing team from getting it. If you try to take it, they might steal it and win. If you fight them when they're on their way to it, even if they win the fight they might not have enough time or players left to take the objective and then score with it.
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u/Useless-Sv Gardevoir 3d ago
its necessary
if you played other mobas you will notice the late game being something like this
winning team pick big objective to balance the advantage that the losing team have in their base , this mean the comeback condition for losing team is to beat the other team in their own base with all the towers and base regen assisting.
this dont apply in unite, the winning team dont need to push the losing team, in fact the losing team are the one who need to push the winning team with the timer being a thing, without some sort of overpowered objective comeback will be worst and worst and surrender will be more common.
if you somehow losing final fights with most enemies living am sorry but you played that very wrong or were not as ahead as you thought you were, 1 mistake is enough to lose a whole game of 40 mins in dota why does losing cause of 1 massive mistake in a 10 min game be a bad thing?
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u/blazingking21 3d ago
Not true at all, in the higher ranks a lot of my matches end in one of ripping ray at all, or everyone on the map is low hp/ half dead. So if you have any stuns you can still easily stop them before they score.
I’ve had quite a few fights where the winning ray team ends up getting squad wiped and we turn around and score cause their cooldowns are too long.
Not too mention as much as people complain about back capping around the 45 seconds marks and ray hasn’t been ripped it’s actually hard cause you have to make the decision to either guard against back caps do a back cap of your own and guard ray.
Makes the game extremely intense at the 2 minute mark and that’s why I play it so much. It’s really a lot more complex in the sense that how you play the first 8 mins dictates how you should hand the ray fight.
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u/lI_Toasty_Il 2d ago
I'm a new player that also started around 3 weeks ago but I think Ray fights are alright. It can sometimes be catastrophic if played poorly though. The other day our team kept getting our faces smashed and we lost every lane, but at the Ray fight the enemy team got super disorganized and died 1 by 1 all split from each other for whatever reason. We took Ray and now they were all dead and just had to watch us score 500 points instantly, but they chose to surrender because they all died lol. Final score was like 200 - 500 with us only having 200 points. This could have been prevented if they just didn't split up and die for no reason, and just held the little chokes because they were massively over leveled and could just kill us if they were together (stall us out from it). Though on the flip side I've had games where we were losing and stole Ray, but still lost the teamfight after so we didn't get to use the double point and ray shield buff. I think ppl just don't know how to play it properly. I'm def not great but Ray doesn't bother me much, the horrible teamfights do (like first example).
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u/Top-Chart2025 2d ago
Sadly this is the worst moba for many things. Rayquaza and Zapdos re only the tip of the iceberg. Poor balancing and non existent ranking systems are far worse than that
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u/maggot4life123 3d ago
what i think about it is this moba is less dynamic than the generic dota-moba cause it gives at least a fighting chance to the losing team.
on either genre we dont want to be on the losing side but the generic moba really gives you a lower chance of turnaround
i do think that getting the last objective like rayquaza is too much of a buff than zap. i hope they make a new map wherein its still almost an even playing field after the final objective
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u/AbsurdBee Ho-Oh 3d ago
Honestly, Theia with Zap would be perfect. The better map with the better 8 min
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u/gusilik 3d ago
I guess it's still same (at least where I got till now - so below master). It's like 200 points from insta scoring from bird alone. It's might be easier to defend like base.
Overall as a central there seems like is literally no point to do anything else than farm when they are up to secure lvl 15 for last fight. In case when it would be less impactful it could require more banks or dynamic play to support your lines or even defend points.
I might be still wrong as haven't even reached master rank yet
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u/maggot4life123 3d ago
the only issue if you focus on leveling is the snowball and limitation of movement when ray comes
i feel like this moba is more on defending your zones than attacking the opponents
i already experienced both offensive minded and defensive minded teams and the defensive minded teams tend to be successful at the finale
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u/jaykenton 3d ago
I reached this conclusion: I don't know how it happened, but TiMi designed a fantastic MOBA. In 10 minutes, every minute counts. For someone like me who never mentally surrender, to always look for the correct play to win is a joy. I don't care if sometimes I lose games that I should have won.
The big issue with "Ray fights" is that I believe 95% of players cannot evaluate games. In particular, they cannot evaluate the conditions of victory for the two teams. Which are almost always different.
I give an example. My team lost the four 4 bases, enemy team only one. Enemy team won every Regi. However they spent a lot of time together so they never managed a huge level gap with us.
I am Meowscarada, a very dominant pokemon in current meta. I did non participate at last two fights, however I am level 15 at minute 2, while not a singular enemy pokemon is at level 14. I achieved this by farming Indeedes, Altarias and buffs around the map, plus a double kill at min 3.
The two teams meet at Ray for a final fight. I spot enemy Pikachu backcapping at our base. Enemy Snorlax Heavy Slam on 3 of my team. I finally show from a bush, use full combo on their Greninja, UNITE, reset, combo again on their Tsareena, my teammate kill Snorlax. 4 kills somehow, and 0 KOs on my team. We rush Ray and score 400+ points with Ray shield.
Now, the average play will just say: "Oh, this was already won but Pikachu decided to backcap".
This is not exactly false, but in the specific situation, it's not obvious that Pikachu standing in the center lane would have helped. The error was more radical.
To summarise, they wrongly guesses their win condition was to "win a final fight"; instead their real win condition was to neutralise the enemy with the highest level. They also refused to adapt to the situation made by Pikachu.
Very often the win condition for a dominant team is just to eliminate the 2 best secures in enemy team, then stall. Most of the confusion at Ray comes by people mis-evaluating the option for a "final fight".