If MOBA games are clustered into the overall “strategy” genre, that makes it the most popular in the world. A game like League or HOTS differs heavily from RTS, but the former creators of Rise of Nations think that they can tap into a new audience of strategy fans with a fusion of genres.
Dropzone is an RTS that eliminates base building and instead focuses on player control over three hero-type units, leveraging a sports-like points system as a victory condition. The three pilots man mech fighters, primarily split between the classic Tank, Support, and DPS roles. An additional two classes will be added in the future. Players draft their pilots and load-outs before each match, each load-out offering various passive (Software) and active abilities.
The match runs fifteen minutes and the victory is awarded to whomever scores the most points. Alien hives line the maps – and there are multiple maps, like most RTS games – and contain a “sportsball” equivalent object. That ball can be delivered to a central uplink on the map, awarding a point to the player. Points can also be obtained from map control, e.g. capturing and holding multiple vision towers simultaneously.
The rest of the gameplay can be seen in the video interview below, but we didn't address one interesting point in the below video: The engine and its impact on input latency. Coinciding with our just-published mouse click latency testing, competitive players should be happy to hear that Dropzone's engine drives down input latency to a range of 1-2ms. This is done using a ground-up built engine by Sparkypants, the developers, which avoids the bloat found in pre-built do-it-all engines currently on the market. The team is comprised of experienced developers who've collaborated on several titles, so this isn't the first time they've endeavored to build or maintain custom engines.
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Editorial: Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke
Video: Keegan "HornetSting" Gallick