How EA's MOBA Dawngate is going to do things differently

With so many current and yet-to-be-released titles, you might feel as if you're floating in a veritable moat of MOBAs. So what will Dawngate, the MOBA that EA didn't-quite-announce last week, be doing to distinguish itself from the rest of the moat-murk? Quite a bit, actually, if this dev video's anything to go by. Dawngate definitely looks like a MOBA, but the old formula's being tinkered with to keep things fresh.

In this video with Machinima, a bunch of Waystone's staff discuss the project. Creative director Hunter Howe has a special interest in lore and increasing the genre's accessibility, as well as changing things up a little.

"We're interested in some of the RTS roots of MOBAs," he says. "In our game, we have economy nodes and territory-control gameplay that's a little bit different to other MOBAs, while still trying to keep the core of what's fun about a MOBA."

Systems designer Alex Hutu elaborates, saying that one of the core features, spirit wells, are "economy objectives." A spirit well will spawn workers that harvest currency for the controlling team, adding another layer to the standard MOBA gameplay.

Also tweaked is the destruction of towers. Destroying a tower makes Striders, the lane-straddling major minions, grow stronger—but the towers can also be regenerated, instantly dropping Striders back to their previous level of strength. It seems this might provide for some interesting player choices within matches, and provides teams lagging behind with a slightly increased change of victory.

Finally, community manager Andy Belford injects a little existentialism into the interview. "We're not making this game for ourselves, we're making this game for the player. If the players don't like it, then what are we doing in this world?" he says, a little mournfully.

Interested in getting in on the action? Sign-ups are already available for the closed beta .