Developer Vela Games, composed of veterans hailing from Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch) and RIOT (League of Legends, Valorant), is creating a MOBA game entitled Evercore Heroes. While the core objective in the game centers around which team clears a dungeon first, the big focus is on eliminating player toxicity.
Too many players express frustration when trying to enter the competitive scene of popular online games. Instead of spending time to put together a dedicated group that knows each others’ skills, those with the best skills often queue for random groups.
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Less skilled players are just vying for a good time or simply trying to improve before getting involved with the elite echelon of these online communities. When struggling as a noob, these individuals are often attacked by a slur of insults to the point that they are eventually discouraged from engaging in the experience at all.
According to Travis George, the co-founder / CEO of Vela and former product lead for League of Legends, “we have a low tolerance for people being awful…and we want to just uphold that at every touchpoint we can.”
Rather than merely relying on skill-based matchmaking, a technique that has seemingly caused more issues than it has fixed, Evercore Heroes changes the nature of the competition itself.
For one, you will not engage in direct combat against another team. Once you and three other teammates have selected your characters from a large roster of heroes divided into the holy trinity of Tank, DPS, and support, you begin facing off against NPCs.
Regardless of minions or bosses, the enemies are all computer-controlled and do not care for your skill level. All human competitors are fighting their own separate battles on maps identical to your team. There isn’t even a way to chat with your rival team.
The two key objectives of the gameplay are to defend the Evercore crystal of your team from AI attackers and subsequently defeat the final boss. While the boss fight starts at the same time for everyone, whoever accomplishes the latter objective in the shortest amount of time wins the round.
In typical MOBA fashion, you will upgrade hero abilities as you progress by leveling up and accumulating gold to purchase shards that provide damage boosts, defense buffs, etc. The best part is that experience and gold are shared across the team so that no one is left behind.
Vela is planning to run a testing event for curious players on Discord and the game’s official website. If you do not manage to be accepted, you can still keep track of the development progress by watching YouTube and Twitter.