esports
Vainglory's North American Finals are this weekend. Want to tune in? Here's a crash course.
Now that Team SoloMid has acquired their own team, Vainglory, the MOBA for touch devices, has officially gone mainstream. Over the past year and a half of intense gameplay balancing, bug fixes, designing new heroes, and building a worldwide tournament network, Vainglory has finally matured to the point where it warrants the attention of eSports enthusiasts and professional gamers. Also, with the sold-out North American Championships being streamed on Twitch during the next few days, it is a good time to become familiar with the game’s concepts, particularly if one wishes to fully enjoy spectating this growing eSport.
Before diving in, there is one consistent theme of Vainglory that everyone should be aware of: most elements of Vainglory’s map design, from the smaller layout, to the centralized objectives, to the connected jungle, are meant to encourage team fights.
Player vs. player (PvP) is the lifeblood of MOBAs, and to watch (or even play) a match where players passively farm creeps for 10-20 minutes can be painful, not to mention contradictory to the objective of PvP. Vainglory’s map design does well in helping players avoid these boring scenarios.
The Main Objective
In Vainglory, there is a single, 3v3 battleground called the Halcyon Fold. As with most MOBAs, the end objective is the opposing team’s base – in this case, a “vain crystal.”
One of the aspects of Vainglory that fosters skirmishes between the teams is the single path – or lane – into each base, which is guarded by turrets that must be destroyed prior progressing to the vain crystal. It’s worth noting that without multiple lanes, there is no such thing as split-pushing – a common strategy in other MOBAs. It’s rare that a turret gets destroyed without some form of engagement with the opposing team, often resulting in a full-fledged team fight.
The Team
Vainglory is played with three-person teams: a laner, a jungler, and a roamer, the latter of which is also known as a support. With only three players on a team, the responsibility for success weighs heavily on each team member and the consequences are heavy when a player’s hero dies or fails to carry his or her weight. At the same time, players who do well in their respective role can have a significant impact on the outcome of the game, even as a roamer. Either way, when someone plays Vainglory his or her efforts – or lack thereof – will not go unnoticed.
The Jungle
The jungle is the single largest feature of the map, containing multiple objectives. As with other parts of the map, the jungle for each side is a mirror image. On each side of the map are four neutral jungle camps.
These jungle camps are a constant source of contention throughout the game because any jungle camp that can be stolen from the other side of the map is more gold and experience points for your team and less gold and experience points for the enemy team. If a team is able to steal enough jungle minions from the opposition, snowballs are possible. Smart teams will try to protect their jungle, even if it means the laner coming down to help on occasion.
In the very center of the map is another key objective: the gold miner. The gold miner is a strong jungle minion – a jungle boss – who spawns at the four-minute mark. In order to prevent casualties, it’s often best to attempt fighting the gold miner as full team of three, but it can also be attempted with two.
The gold miner progressively fills up with gold – displayed on the minimap - over the course of several minutes. At any point, a team can attempt to kill it to obtain team wide payout for however much gold has accrued; the longer a team waits, the bigger the payout. However, this has to be approached with caution because it’s possible for the enemy team to steal the last hit and take the gold payout.
After being killed, the gold miner respawns a short while later and repeats the process of gradually filling up with gold. This creates a persistent objective that encourages opposing players to mingle and create some PvP action.
Lastly, a unique feature of Vainglory’s jungle is the neutral jungle shop, situated in the middle of the map, just below the gold miner. Each team has a shop at their base that they can use, but it often saves precious time by using the jungle shop instead.
If a team is able to exert dominance over the jungle, this often makes it too risky for the enemy team to venture out to the jungle shop, causing them to lose time by teleporting back to base. At a competitive level, it’s often a rush at the beginning of the game to see who can clear their jungle the fastest and get to the jungle shop first. The team who succeeds at this can bully opponents who have not yet had the opportunity to spend gold and acquire additional items.
The Lane
In classic MOBA fashion, lane minions spawn at regular intervals and proceed along a preordained course down the lane and toward an opposing turret.
To keep this interesting, there is a strategic connection between the lane and the jungle via jungle bosses called “minion miners.” Each minion miner your team controls – one on each side of the map – increases the strength of your lane minions. This not only creates another jungle objective for teams to contend over, but it creates a thoughtful dynamic where you can influence whether lane minions are pushing towards you or away from you, depending on which team’s minions are stronger. In essence, you get to choose whether you want to farm safely with minions pushing towards you or create lane pressure by having minions push away from you; therefore, a good team will want their jungler and laner on the same page.
The Kraken
Another principle behind Vainglory is to keep games relatively short – usually around 20 minutes or less, but occasionally getting up to 25 minutes. This is a particularly important principle for a game that is on a mobile device, where players are often trying to get a quick game in while they’re on break or otherwise on the move. One of the mechanisms in place to help maintain these shorter games is the gigantic, turret-pushing beast, known as the Kraken.
At the 15-minute mark, the gold miner disappears and the Kraken takes its place. The Kraken is a slightly tougher jungle boss than the gold miner and the team who deals the final bit of damage releases it. When released, it begins making its way towards the opposing team’s turrets, acting as both a tank and a battering ram.
Final Thoughts
There are certainly other concepts that can be learned, such as team compositions and item builds, but this should give prospective spectators a boost if they attempt to watch this weekend’s tournament series. When all else fails, there’s no substitute for firsthand experience; downloading Vainglory – it’s free – and quickly running through the tutorial will help yield additional insights into how the game works.
Has your interest been piqued? To watch this weekend's event, tune in on Twitch or head to the Vainglory website for more info.
For more Vainglory features, follow @redbullESPORTS on Twitter.