Ace-Arena is a physics based free to play MOBA. The game is not based on a battle, but a "sport". Spearhead games calls it a MOSA - Multiplayer Online Sports Arena. It is heavily reliant on quick thinking, and twitch reflexes. Players face off in teams of 3 each trying to score goals by shooting a disc into the opposing goal. Spearhead focuses on the MOBA aspect of the game by organizing the teams out of three positions. Offense, defense, and a support-ish third position that can excel at buffing teammates, or de-buffing opponents. Each of these positions can be filled by a unique character, kind of like the different champions in LoL. Each one has a couple of skills that allow them to shine in their position.
The game plays like a 3v3 combination of hockey and soccer. The strikers and support head up the court to try and score. The third play has the choice to either stay back in a defensive position, or help them score a goal. There can be a lot of fun back and forth in each game. One team goes for a goal, but the defending team recovers, and they go on the offensive right away, forcing the first team to scramble back to defend. Positioning and communication is really important. If you can get a couple of friends together, talking over team speak or something like that they will have a huge advantage in teamwork. A pug team has no way to communicate. There is no in game voice chat, and typing is out of the question because of how fast paced the game is.
The difficulty though is finding that many people to play the game. The entire time I played I never had a full game of actual people playing. The bots aren't that bad, but they get old fast. Playing against real opponents though revealed how playing against bots helped me develop bad habits. It was still fun, but they were in a completely different league then me.
Added to the problem of low player count are the bugs that work against the pace of the game. If you are making a skill based twitch reflex game, you have to make sure that your net code is tight, and that the controls are responsive. There were many times when I thought I had stolen the disc, or blocked an opponent from stealing when the game jumps for a split second, and I was left empty handed. Everything on my end indicated that I had done what I needed to take possession, but I was obviously playing a few ticks behind. This got frustrating really quickly. I felt that no matter how much I tried to improve, it didn't matter.
This became such a problem that I didn't even look into their F2P model much at all. I couldn't play the game reliably to even think about spending money on it. As it is though, they are charging for "champions", cosmetic items and XP boosts. There doesn't seem to be much, if any pay to win elements to their economy.
ACE has a lot of potential. It could be a great competitive eSport that is really fun to watch, and simple to cast. It has a high skill cap, and shows off the skill of the players well. The main problems though are a lack of said players, and bugs that prevent the twithiness of the game play from shining. I would wait and see how things develop with this game before dedicating too much time, or any money to it.
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