So before we start, I have some explaining to do…

When I started this blog, I was right in the middle of the second semester of my junior year of college. I was extremely excited to start writing posts about gaming and finally having a voice in the community I love. However, I may have been a bit over ambitious about my posting, and somewhere between a 17 page paper about Overwatch for one class and about 9 books worth of reading in another, I lost track of keeping my blog updated. After a while I just couldn’t dedicate the time needed to keep the content at the level of quality I expect from myself. To that end, I had to take a break and finish out the semester. So to those of you who stuck with me through all this nonsense, thank you and I will try to get these posts out more regularly.

Sound good? Okay, now then, on to the video games

I don’t think I’ve made it any secret on here, but I love Hi-Rez studios. Smite is one of my favorite games, due in no small part to its unique take on the MOBA genre with an emphasis on action. What’s more, Hi-Rez is dedicated to making their games accessible to all players through low technical and financial barriers. As someone who games on a budget, paying $25 to own every one of the almost 90 gods in Smite has my approval. So imagine my reaction when, in early 2016, I get an invitation to join the closed beta for a new game: Paladins: Champions of the Realm. I was beyond excited to be a part of the development process for a game made by a company I held in such high standing. Thus, I set myself to the task of playing every aspect of this game, going in with an open mind and an understanding that the game was still in its infancy. I played for hours, trying every character on the roster and playing every possible game mode. So, what did I think?

I didn’t like it.

See, the early builds of Paladins were, in the nicest way I could put it, kind of messy. Specifically, I had issues with three major details. First, the card system, Paladins’ main stand out feature, felt lack luster at best and balance breaking at worst, with certain cards making characters completely broken. This wouldn’t have been a problem were it not for the fact that these cards had to purchased individually, which often lead to having to shell out real dollars if you wanted to contend. Secondly, the early maps were giant, empty areas with decidedly generic designs. The gameplay mainly revolved around three center hubs and two bases, with the rest of the map being a sort of blank space with nothing going on. This made traversing the map boring, and combat was unfarily tilted in favor of long distance characters. Finally, the characters all felt uninspired and, aside from a few exceptions, felt like total copies of characters I had already seen in other titles. Character designs felt like a grab bag of fantasy and sci-fi tropes mashed together, and the lack luster look and feel of these characters made it seem that Hi-Rez was more focused on pumping out as many characters as they could rather than creating new and interesting champions with distinct looks, personalities and gamplay. Combine this with the hype for other games coming out and I simply lost all of my interest in Paladins. Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed with Hi-Rez. I knew for a fact that they could do better and, even if the game was still in an early beta, it was going to take substantial improvement before I would consider returning to the Realm.

Which leads us to the present day. A few months ago, I saw some professional Paladins gameplay. I thought to myself “This looks nothing like the game I played a year ago.” It got me thinking that maybe Paladins was worth another try, and that perhaps all the issues I had with the game were improved or even fixed entirely. I managed to overcome my hesitation and, with the same open mind I gave the game when I first played it, I began to play Paladins once again. So, how was it? Well, I am very happy to say that Paladins: Champions of the Realm, is a good game. That might not sound like much, but given my initial response, I’m going to say that Paladins being good is a massive step forward. The vast majority of the issue I had with the game are gone, and the new characters, maps, and changes have transformed Paladins from an unfocused mess to a clean, fun shooter with a distinct personality.

As I mentioned before, the major issues I had with Paladins were the card system, the map design, and the character design. Since all of these have been changed, lets take a look at what has changed and how it has made Paladins a more enjoyable experience. Since it is the main point of differentiation from other hero-shooters on the market, lets begin with…

The Card System:

One thing I have always appreciated about Hi-Rez games is there tendency to take a game genre and either mash it together with another or try something new with the genre. Paladins is no exception, as the game attempts to mix the first person shooter with elements from the MOBA genre. Case in point: the card system, which allows players to craft a small deck of “cards” that translate into in-game buffs.

In the old build of Paladins, cards were incredibly problematic. While some cards had interesting effects, most were simple damage buffs, adding flat numbers to the damage done by abilities. At its best, it made cards uninteresting and a chore to farm. At its worst, it created a barrier to entry in the game that would greatly affect your effectiveness in a match. Moreover, the card system had rarities assigned to cards, and decks could only feature certain amounts of cards with certain rarities. This was limiting to what kind of builds players could bring into matches, and if your character didn’t have a good enough combination available, they simply weren’t viable. Overall, the old card system was an interesting concept dragged down by poor execution.

The new card system, on the other hand, fixes many of the problems the old system suffered from. First of all, cards have been divided into two groups: basic cards, which function similarly to the cards the game has always had, and the new legendary cards. Legendary cards come in sets of three for each character, and they are meant to be large scale buffs to a character that decides how a player plays their selected champion. These can be flat damage buffs, utility added to abilities, or just changes to abilities altogether. Here is a set for example

Next, primary cards seem to have had their purpose changed from miscellaneous buffs to fill more of a utility role. Rarely if ever will you see a basic card that simply adds damage to an ability, and if they do they usually have a specific caveat to get that extra damage. Most cards will grant things like cc reduction while using certain abilities, healing while abilities are active, and decrease cooldowns. Coupled with the Legendary cards, these new card sets really put an emphasis on your knowledge of the character and how to play them rather than finding the combination that does the highest damage. On top of this, all of the primary cards have levels from 1-4, with their bonuses increasing and decreasing depending on what level you set them at. To balance this, all card loadouts have a 12 point limit, with a cards level corresponding to the amount of points it takes up (e.g. a level 3 card takes up 3 points.) This new system feel far more balanced and focused than the old system, and places the emphasis back on the individual character play rather than who has the best cards.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that these cards do need to be purchased, and that means that one could argue that the system is still pay to win as certain cards are still inherently better than others based on the meta. To that, I respond with the wealth of ways to earn these cards. The main way you will be picking up these cards is by opening radiant chests, and the game is more than willing to throw these chests at you for doing a wide variety of actions, from leveling up a character to using the in game gold currency the game gives you for completing matches or finishing in-game quests. You can even earn these chests by watching Paladins Esports on Twitch, which is a nice little incentive to build up the community. Additionally, these chests have a chance to give repeats, which gives you essence, which in turn can be used to unlock specific cards from the character page. Given this range of ways to earn cards, if you play enough you will eventually get all the cards you need.

So the card system has seem some big improvements, but if the main game is still slow and uninteresting, that won’t mean much. Fortunately, Paladins has improved on the gameplay front as well, and of these areas, maybe the area that received the most love has been…

The Maps:

As I said before, the maps in the early builds of Paladins were massive, and while large maps can be fun when executed properly, the Paladins maps would have benefited from practicing the philosophy of “less is more.” These maps were mostly empty, which made for less tactical, close quarters engagements. This gave high range characters a substantial advantage, as characters with a shorter range would have to close large distances to reach the backline of a team. This also made dying a chore, as you would need to traverse the huge terrain with no real guidance on where to go. It made the mounts, a staple of Paladins play, feel like a design cover-up to compensate for the sheer size of these maps. In addition to this, map designs were bland, falling into the generic plains, forest, and tundra categories without anything interesting or distinguishing to grab a players interest or let them know where they were going.

This, thankfully, is no longer the case. Newer maps in Paladins are far smaller than their early beta counterparts, and, at least in the main game mode, are built around one objective at the center of the map with two paths on each side leading to both team’s bases. These paths are usually fairly tight, with some diverting paths that can be used for flanking or roosts for snipers. This greatly improves balance, as short range characters now have less distance to overcome in order to be effective. The more condensed map sizes also makes team fighting more connected, with fewer areas for players to stand in the distance and just pick off enemies. Overall, the technical layouts of Paladins’ maps is far superior to the older build.

Aesthetically, the maps in Paladins have improved for the most part. There are still a few maps that fall into the “map design for the sake of having that map desgin” category, but for the most part every map has its own aesthetic and look. This also benefits from the smaller map sizes, as the closer quarters show off the details in every corner of the map. This is especially true of the newer maps released in Paladins, such as Brightmarsh, which I feel is the best looking map in the game so far. Furthermore, Paladins maps are used to push the narrative of the game, with each map holding some relevance to one or multiple characters. However, Paladins massively undersells its narrative, and while the maps can give some insight into the backstory and lore of the universe, Hi-Rez could benefit from providing some more context and expanding the story of Paladins just to give their maps some more life. That being said, the maps in Paladins have come a long way since their beginnings, and have only been improving since. Good on you, Hi-Rez.

Well, that’s two for three complaints resolved. I guess that means we have to best for last…

The Characters:

In a hero shooter like Paladins, the characters are going to be the driving force behind a games popularity and appeal. If you cannot craft interesting characters both in their style and gameplay, your game will be lost in a sea of copy-cats. In the case of Paladins, one can see a similar trend to how Hi-Rez has approached the maps: improving with time.

Now, I managed to avoid making this comparison for the majority of this article, and I promise this is the only time I will bring it up. But I feel as though I cannot discuss how far the characters have come in Paladins without making this comparison. With that being said, let’s talk about Paladins relationship… to Overwatch. Look. You can prefer whatever game you want to prefer, and you can argue until you’re blue in the face about how different these two games are, but at the end of the day, these games are similar. Not the same, but similar. And that’s not a bad thing, either! It gives players options on what games they can play without having to completely relearn a game. However, this has lead to some members of the Overwatch community writing off Paladins as a carbon copy, and some members of the Paladins community to vehemently resent Overwatch for stifling Paladins. The main crux of this is based around character designs in Paladins and Overwatch being very similar . In particular, the champion Barik, a short tempered dwarf with a propensity towards building structures and a red color motif, has drawn criticism for being very similar in design and gameplay to the Overwatch hero Torbjorn, a short tempered little person with a propensity to building structures and a red color motif.

Regardless of opinion, when discussing early characters in Paladins, it’s hard to not compare them to Overwatch characters. In many instances, they were very similar and had very similar playstyles, and while Blizzard obviously doesn’t have full control over these archetypes, it does make the early builds of Paladins look like they were trying to ride the coattails of Overwatch hype. However, that’s really where the comparisons to Overwatch stop because, especially in more recent characters, Paladins has really come into its own.

When I left Paladins in early 2016, the last character to be released was Androxus, The Godslayer. When I first saw the design of Androxus, I assumed he would also be trying to get on the Overwatch copy wagon. But in him, I saw a little hope for Paladins. He was different enough from any character I had seen in a previous title that I started to think maybe Hi-Rez was taking notice of the comparisons and making changes accordingly. Turns out, I was right! The current Paladins roster consists of 29 playable characters (soon to be 30) each with their own approaches to their respective roles. These roles include damage, flank, front line, and support. While this is pretty standard, the way Paladins characters go about these roles is very different from the majority of hero shooters I have seen. For starters, the overall playstyle is far more aggressive, with even supports being able to dish out a fair amount of damage if left unchecked. Secondly, there is a very apparent focus on using abilities over simply using basic fire. Of course, you need to be able to land your shots, but a good Paladins player knows that proper use of their characters abilities is what will win them a game. Couple these with the card system mentioned before, and you get a shooter that feels more like a descendant of DOTA than it does Team Fortress.

Aesthetically, Paladin’s characters seem to be based around a blend of science-fiction and fantasy, almost like the design philosophy was “the Knights of the Round Table with guns.” In the early stages, this felt like it was completely unfocused, and some of the older characters still suffer from this. In particular, I’m going to call out the character Buck, who despite his decent character design, breaks my immersion by just having a plain old 12 gauge shotgun. It doesn’t match the rest of the design, and it just looks silly. However, newer characters have very diverse and interesting designs, ranging from the stoic earth goddess Inara, to the mischievous and feline Maeve. What is noticeable about these newer characters is that, for the most part, they look like they play. For example, Trya, a rugged survivalist who uses her wits, hunting rifle, and improvised weapons to survive a harsh environment, has the look of a woman who spends her time in the wild, right down to the bear skin cloak she wears. Meanwhile, Ash, aptly named “The War-Machine,” dawns heavy plate armor, and carries a massive cannon and a flag which she uses to stake her claim to… whatever she wants really. This screams a woman who loves war and fighting, which is reflected in her playstyle of getting up close and personal with the enemy. This shows me that Hi-Rez is branching out and trying new things with their champions, and really focusing in on making a character feel unified rather than having them fulfill a list of checkboxes for what other shooter characters have done in the past.

Conclusion:

My experience with Paladins has been one of watching a game come into its own. What started out as a game desperately trying to find its place and sustain itself off of doing what was expected of it has evolved into a game confident in what it does and how it does it. I was convinced that this game wouldn’t be able to survive in a market over saturated by shooters, but Hi-Rez and the Paladins community completely proved me wrong. And honestly, I couldn’t be happier that it did. Paladins might not be the most popular of its genre, and it might not even be the best made. But the amount of growth, change, and improvement this game has undergone has really shown Hi-Rez’s dedication to making this game work and work well. It is a clean, interesting, and fun experience that I would recommend to any player looking to try a new take on the shooter genre.

Sorry for the long post, everyone, but this is an article I planned on doing for a very long time and I had a lot to say regarding this game, so there you go. Once again, I will be trying to get these out more regularly, and I greatly appreciate your support in writing these articles. If you have something to say, please leave it in the comments below. I would love to see what you guys think about Paladins. Thank you all so much, and take care!