Placed in UI and overall environment due to most of my original criticism being there.
I decided I would create an overly large thread extensively detailing everything wrong with VG now that is has come to PC. I’ve been playing on PC for the past month or two because my tablet exploded and I would rather die than play on a phone. I’ve played this game since Vox release on the tablet. I have no idea how long this post will be but I’ll stick a TL;DR at the end. I make this thread because Vainglory sucks and I want it to be better. Not that ranting will make it better, let’s be honest here if SEMC was actually good at their job we wouldn’t be in this situation but hey, let be blow off some steam in text form.
The UI
The UI that SEMC made has slowly degraded in the years. The first version is still my favourite version, with the second and third being particularly revolting for my eyes. You know it’s a problem when a fanmade UI looks better than what you have in-game (Shoutout to Xhaos). The current version looks better than the previous iterations, but there are a number of distinct problems with it that are honestly bafflingly stupid that even an idiot like me can spot them.
1 - Ranked Indicators
Don’t send me or my smurf requests, I’ll ignore all of them. Now, if you can’t see the problem here, let me point it out to you. When looking at MY rank, I see 5v5 THEN 3v3. When looking at my FRIENDS rank, I see 3v3 THEN 5v5.
? ? ? ? ?
I don’t think I have to explain why this is stupid.
2 - The friend’s list
It’s pretty obvious to see what’s wrong with this. It looks ugly, that’s the end of it. When you compare it to the UI on the main menu, it’s pretty clear that they didn’t even bother with the friends list. The buttons on the main menu have a nice gradient to them; each category on the friends list is a flat grey. The buttons look stock and nasty, almost like placeholder buttons that they accidentally implemented. Somebody on the team actually decided to put a lighter shade of red underneath the white lettering of the player name on the chat screen. It looks nice, but it compromises visibility. That one is more of a nitpick, but you get the point.Also, the right side looks nasty as hell what the nuts.
3 - Match Accept Screen Match Accept
Yes, I did end up dodging this game. The amount of unused space bothers me to no end. Only around a fifth of the screen is used, leaving empty space that could be used to, I don’t know. Have bigger buttons? Show the player icons more effectively? Maybe just use it to look cooler. Just USE IT.
Controls (PC)
My review of playing VG on PC is that it almost puts you at a distinctive disadvantage. There are a few problems that really irk me because they shouldn’t be happening, but just… happen. 1 - Delay on abilities There’s a tiny delay on abilities from pressing the button to the character doing the actual ability that bothers me to no end. This becomes even worse when trying to weave spells with autoattacks. If you have access to both versions, I suggest you try it out for yourself. Pick Kensei, mash his A on both devices and see which comes out faster. Whenever I try to AA - A - AA on Kensei my A activates after the next AA. As in AA - press A - AA - A - AA. Perhaps that’s just a lag thing though. 2 - Shop I double click things on the shop and they never buy. I’m double clicking too fast and it doesn’t register. How was this not fixed. I want die. 3 - Upgrading abilities By using shift + Q/W/E you can upgrade abilities on the fly. Except that it doesn’t have an animation. So it just… happens and you can’t immediately tell if you overdrived the right thing or not. The fact that it’s left shift instead of control bothers me a great deal too; control is more universally used because of the potential dreaded sticky keys, so why not here?
There’s probably more problems that I haven’t experienced yet, especially considering the number of characters I actually play is in the single digits.
In-Game (4.0)
Oh Kensei, what have they done to you. Kensei’s new passive is the worst design I’ve ever seen in a MOBA since Kinetic. Let’s get into it. So what Kensei’s new passive does is it gives him a flat 10-20% damage is the enemy has higher maximum health than he does. The first immediate problem is that if you want this passive to be as effective as possible you’ve just eliminated a large number of defence items from his disposal, particularly Shiversteel. Kensei is meant to be a bruiser, yet the game is punishing him for building tanky, which is both confusing and backwards. To add onto that it’s too damn inconsistent. This passive can reward Kensei for being underlevelled, as now the enemy has higher maximum health and Kensei can do bonus damage. Never would I have thought I would tell myself ‘Now that the enemy has a level advantage, I can go in!’ without it being a joke. The difference between lower max health to higher max health is too large and it honestly isn’t healthy because of how much it can vary. Finally, it punished bruisers more than tanks, which is the opposite of what we need right now. Kensei’s old passive meant that he was best against captains but now that he’s equally as good against other bruisers who have more health than him as captains, it’s going to be another notch against the already non-existent bruiser class. Stormcrown Aftershock Lance doesn’t count as a bruiser, in case you’re wondering. Lyra portal is stupid. Thirty range sounds like a fun ability but in reality, all they’ve done is given Lyra a gimmick that she didn’t need. The issue with Lyra is that in a meta that is 90% mages and captains, she doesn’t particularly fit in. Lyra is most effective against bruisers, who she can zone out and help her carries survive against. Not one shot mages. If the meta was a bit healthier then perhaps we would see more Lyra play, especially after her B overdrive which is strong enough to murder any diver without the mobility of two Reza one tricks but the balancing team at SEMC has decided to hammer a square peg into a round hole. Now we have a thirty range portal which makes nowhere safe in the late game. If you want to take a dragon, you have to have cams at their gold oak. If you want to keep your base safe, you’d better have vision from your base to the red and blue buffs. It’s frustrating to deal with because it’s a low counterplay ability that tosses the normal rules of the game out the window and tells you to deal with it. In case you’re wondering, I don’t talk about 3v3 because it’s a mess.
In-Game (Overall)
We’ve gone from 3.0 to 4.0 and 5v5 still isn’t in a healthy state. The game has failed to transition from 3v3 to 5v5 because of how a large number of characters are designed. San(s) Feng is a pretty clear sign of a greater problem in Vainglory which is CC/Base damage creep, particularly from ranged carries/captains which has left the game both unfun and restricted the meta. It’s not a secret that the game has too much CC. A large number of team fights come down to CCing one of the ranged squishies and focusing them down to win the 4v5. Although this is a viable strategy, the fact that the game mostly comes down to this almost every time is boring and it can lead to your game being ruined because of one positioning mistake. Hi soloQ. This (surprisingly?) isn’t fun for most players, because winning using this single tactic isn’t difficult and losing against it is just plain frustrating.
The problem is that although we are now in 4.0, we are still in a terribly long shift from 3v3 to 5v5. The amount of CC in 3v3 is actually bearable simply because there’s less people to stun you. When there’s less stuns, there’s less of a chance that you’ll get locked till you simply fall over. However, in 5v5… well, you get the picture. This removes a lot of characters from the game and leaves you with this.
Either
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They can survive a CC chain.
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They can avoid a CC chain AND kill five enemy players.
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They can early game cheese so hard that nothing matters.
The second is pretty simple. Things like Baron, Magnus, Skaarf. The first is captains and full tanks, so you’d think that the third is bruisers and assassins, to try and bring diversity in the meta right?
I think you already know the answer to that.
Currently, Captains are just better bruisers. They build full tank but still do pretty good damage, they can splitpush with a Crown and a Weave, they can duel squishies and they scale into late game with their utility, something that
Alpha, Blackfeather, Joule, Kensei, Krul and Rona don’t have the opportunity to do.
Even the more CC orientated bruisers such as Glaive, Reim or Tony don’t have the tankiness necessary to keep up with standard captains. Almost every melee damage dealer is stuck in this boat where they’re closer to mediocre captains than actual usable characters. The only time they get played are when they’re absurdly overpowered, such as the classic ‘half health you at level 2 with one B’ bot lane Rona (outside of some weird counterpick).
Sans really brings light to the bruiser problem. The only difference between Sans and a captain is that he has less utility and he has CC immunity. He can afford to not go full tank because of his CC immunity cheese, but is that really fun?
I certainly don’t find him fun to play as or against. He’s an incredibly forgettable character, even more so than Tony. Not even particularly meme worthy, just as dry as rye bread.
I’d certainly say the same thing about Grumpjaw if he was released around now. These characters are overloaded and forcefully reduce the weakness of bruisers even outside of teamfights, leaving them frustrating to deal with in a 1v1 or skirmish because of how overloaded they are.
My favourite character to rag on is Kinetic and for good reason. Kinetic is probably the worst offender when it comes to creating a healthy meta. What Kinetic has is
- A spammable projectile
- Incredibly high base damage
- An easy to use dash
- A heavy slow (+ stun)
- Good range
- Surprisingly high base defence
This is what I call a ‘ranged bruiser’. Ranged bruisers have everything a bruiser should have (Splitpush, Dueling, Good Mobility, Some CC, Good damage, Good tank stats) but ranged, so without every single weakness (Kiting, late game, getting camped, CC).
It’s a little frustrating to see a ranged character have a better 1v1 than Blackfeather at melee range, but that’s VG I guess.
Remove her stun from her WP side or we’re going to have problems.
What the hell happened to BP?
Breaking Point used to be the most build WP item but it suddenly fell off the map after a massive nerf. It seems strange considering that BP was a core bruiser item (or closer to the ONLY weapon item melees used better than ranged). It’s almost like BP was being abused by ranged characters who used it better than melees and they got it nerfed for everyone.
Thanks SEMC. Looking out for your player base, clearly.
How am I supposed to play Joule Critless with this garbage ass BP GDI
Vainglory really needs to go back and fix a lot of their hero kits. A large number of heroes have what are essentially ‘null’ abilities that don’t particularly do anything and are that weak specifically because of how strong another part of their kit is and they don’t really synergise with the rest of the kit to work well. Some immediate examples are Ringo’s C, Silvernail’s B, Kinetic’s Ult and Petal (her meme game is too strong D:). As soon as tHe bAlAnCInG tEaM tries to make these abilities relevant, they create monsters that shouldn’t be named (Blood for Blood). A lot of characters honestly need a bit of a rebalancing and a facelift. Personally, I’d give changes to Ardan, Adagio, Blackfeather, Glaive, Ringo, Silvernail and Taka. Silvernail’s wouldn’t even be that hard. Just change his passive to something that actually interacts with his tripwires and give his B a massive delay but also a large armour shred effect. Boom, you actually have to CC someone and hit your B for maximum damage instead of autoattacking, missing your B and autoattacking again. That way he’d ACTUALLY be a big brain character, instead of the disappointment he is now. Boom, rework that actually focuses on what makes him interesting. You might say that that would make the bruiser problem worse, but personally, I think Silvernail SHOULD counter bruisers. He has the perfect kit for it, not this weird sudo-Baron burst. So shut up.
If I had to fix the bruiser problem, I’d probably nerf every captain’s base damage (outside of Flicker) and then give captains who are now lacking alternate methods of utility. Give Adagio a slow on his B, like a Shiversteel you can apply to a teammate that scales off bonus health. Give Ardan a small armour/shield shred on his BfB scaling with level. Give Cath increased reflect damage. Don’t buff Lance or Lorelai though they suck.
Then I’d go through each character one by one and nerf their CC duration or change it to soft CC. Take 0.5 seconds off each rank of Cath ult. Take 0.1 seconds of CC duration off Ardan’s ultimate per rank. Change Magnus B from a stun to a 99% slow. Nerf Lorelai’s stun duration health scaling. Remove Kinetic’s stun on B overdrive and give it a 300 CP unlock. Reduce the tripwire slow. Increase the CD on Lance A and B slightly. You get the point. Although it seems like a lot of changes, the idea is to allow you to actually play the game instead of getting solo killed by Yates at level 2 or CC chained from a lucky Kinetic B snipe.
TL;DR
UI doodoo
PC version doodoo
Stupid changes are stupid
Balance big bad
Remove Kinetic
If you want context, start reading. It’s not exactly a novel just yet, trust me.
So yeah, those are my gripes that come to mind. I will keep occasionally complaining until SEMC fixes their game or until I stop caring enough to actually quit.
I’m going back to Spellbreak. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. You have my permission to call me a nerd