#Paragon: 3 Weeks Later

     Tomorrow, Paragon's Early Access turns 3 weeks old, and I've played quite a lot of it since then. Not as much as I'd like to, of course, but sadly I don't get paid to sit in front of my computer screen playing video games all damn day. I've played around 50 games of PvP and have tried numerous heroes and play styles. I've experience pretty much every thing Paragon has to offer at this point, and I think I'm ready to give a finalized review of the Early Access stage.

     Paragon does everything right. Because of this, Paragon was very easy for me to settle in to given my experience with other MOBAs. I was easily able to recognize what heroes were good for what roles given their abilities, the map layout was easy to memorize, the card system was fairly easy to get the hand of if you approach it like custom item sets in other MOBAs, and the movement system and various other mechanics came pretty naturally. However, that is all because I am no stranger to this genre. Coming in to Paragon blind as somebody who has never played a MOBA before may be very intimidating to some players. The game lacks a lot of tutorial aspects, the card system can be confusing, the map can turn in to a maze, and a lot of Paragon's mechanics are fairly complicated, and that's all on top of the general high skill curve that comes just from it being a MOBA. If you're looking to enter in to the genre through Paragon, I would suggest finding something else. At the very least until Open Beta comes this summer.

     As somebody who hated the default control scheme of Smite (ASDW to move, Mouse to look around and aim, 1234 for abilities), I like to think that Epic Games took what Smite failed at and improved on it. ASDW for movement, Q RMB E and R for abilities feels very natural and button presses require minimal finger movement. I have always thought that a fluid and intuitive control scheme is one of the most important things for a MOBA to get right, and Paragon hit the nail right on the head with this one. In addition to the general controls, the movement system is also fluid and easy to get accustomed to. The idea of "Travel Mode" comes off as taking on from Heroes of the Storm's play book, which is fine by me. Having a faster out-of-combat movement mode for getting around the map is something more MOBAs should have, although it is not without risks. Getting hit by an enemy hero while in travel mode will not only disable travel mode, but it will root you in place and disable any movement abilities for several seconds. Some of the most intense moments in a 1v1 lane has been when both me and my opponent were in travel mode and were sizing eachother up, moving closer and closer to try to bait the other person in to disabling their travel mode so we could get in to position, or hopefully root them. Other movement abilities to be expected in MOBAs such as Blink and Teleport come in the form of cards that you can slot in to your deck and pick up in-game.

   

     While on the subject, the Card system is a fairly unique replacement for the traditional Item Shop that most MOBAs use. Players start out with one (sometimes two) starter decks for each hero, and can then earn card packs through progression or by purchasing them for 10,500 reputation (the free currency that can be only earned by completing matches). Each pack contains 5 random cards that the player can add in to the starter decks or create a new deck entirely. Each hero as 2 "Affinities" that are totally not ripped off from Magic: The Gathering's mana colors or anything. These affinities are Fury (red), Growth (green), Order (white), Intellect (blue), and Corruption (black...well, now it's dark purple but same difference). Some heroes have both their affinities as the same, but most of 2 different ones. A hero can only use a deck with cards from their affinities or the generic "universal" affinity (totally not colorless mana) which can be used by any hero regardless of their affinity. Cards are divided in to 3 categories: Primes, Equipment, and Upgrades. Prime cards are only activated after your team is granted the Orb Prime buff by defeating the boss minion in the jungle and delivering the Orb to the drop point. Prime cards give powerful bonuses to both stats and lane pushing power, the exact bonuses depend on the selected prime card. Equipment cards are essentially what you'd expect them to be: potions, wards, and various forms of gear. Some equipment cards provide general stat bonuses, and others have unique activated effects. The final card type is Upgrades. Upgrade cards provide significant bonuses to one stat and can be slotted in to an Equipment that provides the same stat bonus as the upgrade (an equipment that gives attack speed and physical damage can receive an attack speed or physical damage upgrade, but not a life steal or energy armor upgrade). Most equipment cards can have up to 3 upgrades, and provide a bonus for fully upgrading them.
     After you build your deck for a specific hero, you select it at the beginning of a match to use those cards. During the match, you will earn CXP (Card Experience) from killing minions, heroes, and buildings, as well as by collecting from a harvester (a device you can place in the jungle to gather CXP and XP that, when collected, is given to every member of the team). CXP is separate from XP and every Card level gives you 3 Card Points to spend. You spend these points like you would gold in other MOBAs to get more equipment, or purchase upgrades for the ones you already have. More powerful cards cost more, and so require more card levels to purchase. Because of the RNG nature of the card system, there is a lot of concern that the game will become extremely grindy and RNG based when competitive play is enabled, due to certain decks being stronger than others. As it stands, everything you need to be viable is given to you in the starter decks, but the concern is not misplaced. Epic Games will have to be very careful to make sure that they don't add in cards or combinations of cards that result in Meta decks that become required in order to play competitively. All in all, despite potential for issues in the future, the Card system is a well-implemented and fun mechanic that does the job of "item shop" pretty well.
   

     Matches typically last around 35 minutes or so, although you can get some that last 45 or more if the teams are fairly even. In cases of one team being significantly more skilled than the other, matches can last anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes. That brings us to another issue: matchmaking. Right now there is no true MMR system that pairs people up, although it does try to put equally skilled players together using some internal parameters. In fact, the only way to really gauge progress at this point is through the use of http://agora.gg which uses Match History to determine its own version of MMR which doesn't really match up with the one the actual matchmaking system uses, although it DOES provide a clear measurement of progress that the game itself does not offer at this time. All that said, most matches are fairly even, although you will still get steam rolling teams that massacre their opponents.
     The overall pace of the game is not too fast, but not too slow either. It's right in the middle where most MOBAs should be. You have your clearly defined 3-section games, with an early, mid, and late. Early games tends to last around 10 minutes and involves players going through the motions of pushing lanes, leveling up, and gathering card points. Once one team starts to gain momentum and is able to push through the first line of towers, Mid game starts and sees a lot of lane rotating and roaming as both teams try to outmaneuver the other in order to secure tower kills. Late game typically begins once one team has pushed all the way to the enemy inhibitors, starting the typical game of "siege the base until it cracks". There are lots of ways games can play out, but that's just been my experience with Paragon thus far.
     There are only 14 heroes so far, so there isn't a lot of variation in team comps. And in fact there isn't a lot of comp in team comps. The only PvP queue available at this point is Quick Match, which allows a player to select a hero prior to joining queue, and then gets paired up with 4 random other players to form a team. It does seem like the game at least tries to form a viable team, but that could just be due to the fact that there are so few heroes right now. There is a lot of controversy surrounding balance issues among some heroes right now. There's the argument that the melee carries Grux and Feng Mao, the tank Rampage, and the carry Murdock are all seriously overpowered and need heavy nerfs, and to the contrary you get the people arguing that the heroes aren't overpowered, they just are easy to snow ball with due to their kits and require caution to make sure they don't get fed. I find myself in the latter category, although I can't deny that Rampage being able to ult and soak up tower shots like bug bites or Murdock being able to deal 2700 damage in 2 hits late game is pretty broken and should be tweaked, but not as much as people may claim. Overall, despite obvious flaws that can be attributed to the game being in early development, matches are a lot of fun and some could argue even relaxing due to the pacing of everything, but that is broken up when fights start up and it quickly turns in to an intense and energizing brawl.

     As for the developers, I think it's safe to say that Epic Games is nothing if not venerable. They've released quite a lot of classics and hits over the years, and have experience in making Arena-based multiplayer games. Not my first choice for a company to make a new MOBA, but so far they've proven that they can stand with the best of them and have delivered a very promising games. They plan to release a new hero every 3 weeks, which will be very interesting to see, they post frequent blog updates and are very transparent about what they're doing. They are also very community-oriented and have been talking with their players in numerous forums including their own. They've been answering questions and being very upfront and friendly with their player base which is very nice to see from a major player in the Video Games Industry these days. They've also taken to heart the stigma that "MOBAs are toxic clouds of pain and suffering and are infested by the worst of humanity", and have been doing everything they can to stop it. Player Toxicity is met with very fast punishment, and players have come on to the forums to complain that they got anywhere from a 2-7 day ban from the game for their behavior "without a warning". The temp ban is the warning, and I am very happy to see EG cracking down on negative players. The forums are actually more toxic than the game itself is which is a refreshing change of pace. And I'll admit I don't do anything to combat the toxicity in the official forums, but then again my assholiness is brought about by me being blunt about things or responding to people in kind rather than a general desire to cause trouble or flame people. Although, that said it does need to be brought up that a lot of the games playerbase at this time is MOBA newbies who don't understand what they're doing, which has caused a lot of tension in the players who take early access alpha builds of MOBAs deadly serious, which is the epicenter for a lot of the general negativity that is produced by the games community. That, and the fact that Paragon is cross platform with PS4 (and possibly Xbox One in the future if the rumors ring true) which brings up the typical "PC MASTER RACE" argument that serves no purpose, although PS4 players don't have access to chat functionality so that can cause communication issues. There is however a team comms functionality which allows players to make pings and callouts with just the press of a couple buttons.

To summarize, Paragon has proven itself to be a very interesting game filled with potential to stand with League, DOTA, and Smite. The games current state leaves a bit to be desired but that will change with time. It's complicated for newbies, but easy to pick up if you're a MOBA veteran. Matches are fun and  engaging, and relatively toxicity-free. The developers have shown that they genuinely want to make a great game and care about their players' feedback. And as for the community? Well...it's a MOBA community that's for damn sure. 

We'll have to see where it goes from here, but as it stands I highly recommend picking up Paragon if you're willing to be a tester for an unfinished game and love MOBAs. 

O-oh...you were looking for a numerical score? I forgot you people love numbers...um okay...how about....I give Paragon a perfect "I highly recommend picking up Paragon if you're willing to be a tester for an unfinished game and love MOBAs out of 10". There. That's your score.

(You can pick up a Paragon Founder's Pack starting at $19.99 here: https://www.epicgames.com/paragon/founders)