Hey guys, chronic high quality poster daft here with another highly anticipated Off-Topic post!
Today I wanted to discuss one of my favorite games right now and a comprehensive guide as to why I constantly pester people to play it.
First I think it's important to address the elephant in the room; no Paladins didn't rip off Overwatch.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Paladins/comments/53qusf/a_brief_history_of_paladins_as_response_to/
If you also want an in-depth take from someone who's played both games and gives an objectively fair comparison of the two, I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE you watch this video from Shammy:
All that shit aside, I want to talk about why this game has better mechanics than OW, and why it's a lot more fun casually even if you don't want to sweat the game and take it super seriously.
The games core mechanics essentially rely on customizability and tuning your playstyle.
Each champion (46 total) has 3 talents, which can do all sorts of things including changing the way an ultimate works, adding stuns after landing an ability on an opponent, and so on. On top of this, all champions have a deck of 16 cards, minimum & maximum 5 cards in a loadout, each of which can be put up to level 5, but here's the catch: you only have 15 points to spend in a loadout. This means you have spread out card levels to maximize your effectiveness. For example, the champion below, Viktor (basic Call of Duty style champion), has a set of very basic cards. This would be one of the particular loadouts a person would use with him if they choose the talent centered around constantly shooting at people and being on the move.
If someone was going to use the talent for Viktor centered around his grenade (which increases the AOE by 40%), they would lower "Compensator" to a 1, and they would put 5 points into the "Grenadier" card, allowing them to spam grenades which is a much different playstyle.
Wait, you thought that was complicated? Well this game also an item shop during the game.
You earn 1 credit a second naturally, 20 credits for an elimination (assist), 40 credits for a killing blow, 300 credits for successfully capturing the point, and 2 credits a second on top of the passive 1 a second for actively pushing a payload or contesting an objective. There are 3 levels to each item, some are obviously better than others, and they all vary in price.
The reason this is so important is to provide counter play. If you find the enemy team has 5 healers, 5 tanks with shields, or 5 characters with stun or CC options, what do you do? Look towards the item shop. Cards like "Resilience" will mitigate crowd control up to 60% which can be crucial against match ups with lots of stuns and slows.
Ever find yourself pissed off in Overwatch because the healer would just follow one DPS around the whole time while he rapes your team? Well no more! Items such as "Cauterize" exist in Paladins, where your main attack will apply reduced healing for a short duration after hitting an enemy, forcing DPS to back out of combat for a while for Cauterize to wear off and healers to get the muscle memory for when Cauterize wears off to maximize their effectiveness.
At first, the amount of champions, talents, cards, and items may seem extremely overwhelming, but typically the more complicated a game is, the more depth it has and the longer you'll find yourself engrossed within it.
I've only scratched the surface with the games mechanics, and there really is a style for everyone. Are you a giant no skill pussy who sits back and shoots at tanks? That exists! Do you enjoy hyper mobility and crazy flick shots? That exists!
In short, I hope I was able to convey why this game is so much better than Overwatch because it's deeper, actually has counter-play beyond "being the right person", and has a constantly shifting meta that isn't scrutinized and designed as in Overwatch; new strategies like talent and loadout combos are discovered weekly in this game which constantly keeps it fresh and interesting.
Oh, and it's free-to-play. https://store.steampowered.com/app/444090/Paladins/
