So, lets just say that I was bored and wanted to screw around. hence I decided to download AoV and try it. I wanted to know why it was so addicting in china. I start up and a message is shown to me and I go through the tutorial. Then I complete the tutorial and enter my first match. The match is pretty easy, as I completely destroy the enemy in mid lane while my team and the enemy team are stuck in side lanes with no turrets (towers in this case) destroyed.
So here are my thoughts
First if all the introduction is very good and the tutorial also makes things very easy and simplified. It shows us the importance of objectives and lanes. The basic mechanics are also very well written or displayed. The understanding of basics is also very easy to grasp for new players. The UI is ok. The in-game communication is also very good with just some text messages and voice chat.
Now the bad stuff. This part should be very obvious.
Bad graphics
Zero importance to jungle
Very boring gameplay
No team co ordination( you wont need it anyways)
Now the only thing that vainglory should copy for the AoV is the tutorial. It can really help players in lower tiers.
PS- I only played for 1 hour so don’t criticize me for anything
It felt cheaply made. I do agree the jungle does not feel important at all, especially in the late game. Also, the lack of inhibitors Or armories in VG’s case makes games last longer than they should if teams are actually evenly matched. The only reason AoV has such a big player base is the brand name. Otherwise, very mediocre. What’s worse is AoV, with it’s popularity, may make other mobile MOBAs such as VG look unappealing with the bad first impression, so it may drive more people to not get into VG as many players may think AoV is the top of the line mobile MOBA in the market rn.
My couple of hours of aov weren’t that bad. However, I do agree with you two that the jungler role is so neglected. Never in my 20-30 games have I even seen anyone willingly choose jungle. But it’s worse than that - the laners keep taking every jungle camp. Even in vg the laners don’t bother with the double small camps. So I end up playing jungle and/or support with miniature farm.
I’m hoping that this is just a low tier issue, but ever since I got ranked unlocked, I’ve been playing it. I advanced enough to start seeing teamwork and better plays so I’m assuming they’re smart enough to know how to work the jungle.
Again, this may be a low tier issue, but the meta is not even subtle by how everyone instalock the same 2-3 heroes. And of course, no one ever plays support or jungle. Which means I get to play jungle tank for 80% of my matches yayyyyyy. I’m not complaining much since my kda is so high despite being the least capable of doing damage.
they also got nice integration with social media. imagine your friends who post their match stats with nice skin. it’s kind of like free advertising.
This is quite a good observation… I really can’t fathom why SEMC hasn’t added some way to share your match result from the end-of-match scoreboard screen by now. Like you said, it’s literally free advertising every time someone decides to hit “share on Twitter” or whatever.
SEMC needs to step up their marketing. Clearly a few ads in YT and the appstore somehow are not enough to really get the game out there. Unfortunately the Bing Bong ads, although annoying and super cringey like other mobile game ads though they actually show real gameplay, did get the game a massive casual player base especially since they have legends in their name, so everyone would be attracted to it from the name itself. However, I do not want SEMC to go down the cringe path. I think another thing is many MOBA players probably know about VG, but do not take it seriously as it is a mobile game. SEMC needs to sponsor big streamers Like they did with Anthony Kong Phan more often, especially get big MOBA streamers to highlight the game and prove it’s a serious competitive game.