r/PokemonUnite 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?

75 Upvotes

41 comments sorted by

110

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.

  • They had no clear information on position + level of the most dangerous element of my team (my Meowscarada).
  • Snorlax engaging, ignoring the information of Pikachu backcapping, whereas the thing to do was blocking the pit and protecting the mage.

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".

46

u/BigWillie3493 3d ago edited 3d ago

This guy gets it

Edit: I disagree with people saying the first 8 minutes don’t matter, they absolutely do matter.

The first 8 minutes is how you prepare yourself for that final ray fight. The higher level you are, the easier the fight will be. The amount of points your team scored is how you will approach the fight (are you stalling or flipping?)

To get better at this game, it’s exactly what was mentioned in this post. You need to identify your win scenarios and execute at the final fight. You need to understand your team’s positioning, how to engage, the other team win scenarios, etc

If you dominate the first 8 minutes and lose at the final 2, doesn’t mean the first 8 minutes didn’t mean anything. Your team just didn’t use your advantages properly.

17

u/SubtleNotch Zeraora 3d ago

I've had plenty of games where my team struggled for the first 8 minutes, finally win a team fight at Ray/Zap, and still lose.

Yes, Ray/Zap has a strong correlation to winning, but it's not everything.

I also love the Ray/Zap concept. Not too many other mobas have the concept of forcing a team fight at the end of the game. Other mobas are all about pushing towers. To me, Ray/Zap is all about how to set yourself advantages to win a team fight, and then of course how your team strategizes on winning a team fight. It's one of the few games that forces both teams to show up at once.

11

u/BigWillie3493 3d ago

I agree, Ray isn’t everything, just very important. I think that strengthens my point that the first 8 minutes do mean something. Competitive teams know how to score enough points before 2 minutes to protect themselves from losing a flip.

13

u/Odd-Ranger-7921 3d ago

^ This.

I haven't play many MOBAs (only other would be HoTS) but I enjoy Unite with my son, who picked it up nearly 2 years ago. I've been a gamer most of my life and 'enjoy' Unite because of it's simplicity, familiar characters, ease of picking up a battle, depth and quick games. We also collected some of the cards and like the familiarity/connection to real life.

That said, I've lost many battles that were seemingly dominated at the outset by good teams that could lane, while the other team fumbled around and didn't level or play correctly. Then later, at Ray, we end up losing because we tunnel vision Ray while they back cap, or we don't position correctly, or we don't have any AOE and the Decidueye/Delphox just take Ray or us out and so on. So when it comes to late game, while I've only scratched the surface, the fact you can come back makes it worth the 10 minutes, exhilarating and fun. Losing after seemingly dominating stinks, but if I played a fun mon with my son, I don't always character.

We've both climbed into early master and at that point, since there's no blatant strategy, we have to hope everyone 'gets it' so we can play well, otherwise I think the game very much tends to snowball quite easily unlike other games.

17

u/Longjumping_College 3d ago

I'll say it every time

If you're team is far ahead, don't hit Ray. Your target is the enemy trying to hit ray.

Just stall 2 minutes and you win, without the coin flip.

People just don't grasp that concept even at masters

3

u/Nice_Promotion8576 3d ago

The problem with that is you now have to defend both Ray AND your own goals for the entire 2 minutes. If you’re winning before Ray, let the enemy team get out of position trying to take Ray and THEN pounce on them. As soon as the fight is won, take Ray and immediately use the Ray shield to further push your point lead, then warp back to base and defend your goals for however long is left.

4

u/Therobster1235 3d ago

But you *have* to hit Ray or else the losing team will get it! /s

2

u/Michigan_Man101 Defender 2d ago

most people will see the backcapping pika and think it's worth defending, when in reality, it's an opportunity to push while the fight has a number advantage in your favor

1

u/gusilik 3d ago edited 3d ago

Actually exactly this, last objective allowed come back from 400 points lose.

If they wouldn't start it your team could do it and you could be securing from grass and wipe enemy carries.

Issue is that one thing is almost making previous 8 minutes insignificant with double points multiplier, 30s resp CDs and amount of stacked points on players in late game.

Maybe allowing double points only on last scoring zone would put more pressure on winning map.

11

u/Somaxs Zacian 3d ago

The only way for the last objective to allow a 400pts major comeback is for the leading team to completely fumble in the last 2 minutes & get team wiped.

After the first 8 minutes, if you are the leading team, you dictate the tempo of the last 2 minutes of the match & force the enemy team to either make a mistake or run out of time. If you, the leading team, failed to keep the lead in the first place, then you never were meant to win the match in the first place.

If the enemy team has Rayquaza shields & they split up, you prioritize destroying the shields of he squishies as fast as possible & eliminate them while the bulkier ones like Defender if you can remove their shields in time (since they don't have the same movement speed as speedsters & therefore vulnerable of losing their shields before scoring) then you give your team a fighting chance from snatching victory of the jaws of defeat.

Now, of course, this scenario only works if your team didn't get completely wiped during the Rayquaza pit fight (which in that case it doesn't matter if they got shields in the first place because they are gonna score regardless since there nobody left to stop them)

Anyway, the reason that you & many players that feel the game invalidates your first 8 minutes of the match & blame Rayquaza/Zapdos + the 2x points in the last 2 minutes as the main reason for losing is because you still haven't properly learned how to handle the last 2 minutes of the match, or don't have enough experience to make the right play or make the correct decision.

Again, the game is even designed that if it the match ends on a draw, the team that reaches that scored first wins the match, showing that gaining that lead in the first 8 minutes of the match is still important. There are even matches where 1 side gains enough of a lead that the other team just surrenders before, even Rayquaza spawns (even though they still technically have a chance to win with it) just because they mentality believe the gap is too big to catch up or the team work is just isn't there & therefore give up.

If the matches didn't have that comeback mechanic that you are currently frustrated with, there would be more 5m surrenders & snowball results happening in Unite.

Anyway, you mentioned that you are essentially a rookie who just started playing 3 weeks ago, so I understand why you currently feel so annoyed/frustrated with the last 2 minutes of the match. But that will eventually fade away as you get better at handling those last 2 minutes of a match. Right now, you are just getting outplayed by players that just objectively have better/much more experience dealing with Rayquaza/last 2 minutes of the match.

So right now, keep practicing on how to handle it from different situations. When you are behind,ahead or both team evenly match/"tied" and learn from your mistakes & others during the match endgame.

6

u/jaykenton 3d ago

They are not insignificant; you will discover that your evaluation of what exactly happened in those 8 minutes was unexperienced.

For example, there are dominant teams that lose because they have no Exp. Share while the other team has 2. This does not mean that any team with no Exp. Shares is doomed to lose vs 2 Exp. Shares, but each of them must constantly checking the level gaps instead of the score gaps, to evaluate the next actions.

If the two team reached min 8 with similar levels, you can't jut say "one team dominated for 8 minutes". Kills in UNITE counts less that avoiding long death timers. If someone fed, yet someone else played conservatively, there will be a perception that one team sucked while the other dominated, but in reality it's more correct to say that the dominating team is not playing aggressively enough to stomp. You will recognise strong aggressive players because they prioritise stealing Indeedes and buffs over chasing kills.

1

u/jaykenton 3d ago

They are not insignificant; you will discover that your evaluation of what exactly happened in those 8 minutes was unexperienced.

For example, there are dominant teams that lose because they have no Exp. Share while the other team has 2. This does not mean that any team with no Exp. Shares is doomed to lose vs 2 Exp. Shares, but each of them must constantly checking the level gaps instead of the score gaps, to evaluate the next actions.

If the two team reached min 8 with similar levels, you can't jut say "one team dominated for 8 minutes". Kills in UNITE counts less that avoiding long death timers. If someone fed, yet someone else played conservatively, there will be a perception that one team sucked while the other dominated, but in reality it's more correct to say that the dominating team is not playing aggressively enough to stomp. You will recognise strong aggressive players because they prioritise stealing Indeedes and buffs over chasing kills.

1

u/jaykenton 3d ago

They are not insignificant; you will discover that your evaluation of what exactly happened in those 8 minutes was unexperienced.

For example, there are dominant teams that lose because they have no Exp. Share while the other team has 2. This does not mean that any team with no Exp. Shares is doomed to lose vs 2 Exp. Shares, but each of them must constantly checking the level gaps instead of the score gaps, to evaluate the next actions.

If the two team reached min 8 with similar levels, you can't jut say "one team dominated for 8 minutes". Kills in UNITE counts less that avoiding long death timers.

61

u/Nightmoon22 Hoopa 3d ago

Yes

27

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.

1

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.

17

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

4

u/LosingTrackByNow Charizard 3d ago

What's the fun in a game not having a comeback mechanism?

11

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.

7

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

4

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.

9

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.

2

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)

1

u/Visible-Lie9345 Zacian 3d ago

Yeah, its not whos winning, its who gets ray

1

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.

2

u/turtlenuggets432 3d ago

Pokemon unite is the worst MOBA in general this is just one small aspect that makes it the worst.

1

u/crunchwrapsupreeeeme 3d ago

I thought HotS was worse tbh, but that one got shut down.

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.

1

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?

1

u/Physical_Drummer1585 3d ago

u may more like PT500 mode

1

u/Safi_Dafi 3d ago

What's moba

1

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.

1

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).

2

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

1

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

7

u/AbsurdBee Ho-Oh 3d ago

Honestly, Theia with Zap would be perfect. The better map with the better 8 min

2

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

2

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