It may look like a MOBA, but Evercore Heroes isn’t like League of Legends or Dota 2. It’s not an RTS or an MMO, either. It’s a competitive, objective based multiplayer game that doesn’t involve player-versus-player combat.
That means no wrangling your enemies into the dumpster with your own two hands. Instead, you and your teammates win by tackling PvE challenges – like boss battles, or defending your base from waves of enemies – more effectively than the other three teams you’re facing in a match.
I recently had the opportunity to preview a pre-beta build of Evercore Heroes, and discover exactly how a match plays out. As a MOBA fan, I do enjoy wrangling my enemies into the dumpster, so I was curious to find out what a less adversarial format of competitive game would feel like.
When you start a match of Evercore Heroes you’re pitted against three other teams, each containing four players – typically one damage-dealer, one tank, and one support. Each team plays on the same map, but they can’t directly interact with one another. You can, however, still see how enemy players are moving in real time, as they appear as wisps floating around in their team colors.
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The match is split into several phases. At the beginning, you’ve got a short period of time to explore the map and power up by collecting resources. Then, an event called the Luum Rush begins, where each team simultaneously tackles the same objective, and your team is rewarded Luum depending on their relative performance. Gaining as much Luum as possible is pretty vital, as it increases the health of your Evercore, the crystal at the heart of the map.
Once the Luum Rush ends, you’ll need to hurry back to your Evercore as the Surge Wave begins, sending waves of enemies to attack your base. One team must fall at this stage, so if you want to stay in the game, just don’t die!
Admittedly, that’s easier said than done, as mobs in Evercore Heroes aren’t exactly pushovers. I played on medium difficulty, and even when dealing with basic mobs, my team and I had to consider our positioning and target priority to avoid taking unnecessary hits.
That said, once people learn how to play the heroes and how each enemy works, I expect dealing with them will become significantly easier – but, to keep things challenging as players increase in ability, map difficulty will actually scale based on the skill rating of the players in the match.
Thankfully, our team survived the first Surge Wave, and we once again headed out to secure resources for our team. The matches I played felt really fast-paced, as there’s such a short interval between phases, and you want to be as efficient as possible in order not to fall behind.
After another Luum Rush Event and Surge Wave, another team is eliminated. The remaining two teams then both graduate to the final challenge, which varies depending on the map you’re playing on.
On the Kru Mines map, we were transported into the lair of the Troll Warlord, a giant boss who we had to take down as fast as possible. As part of the fight, both teams were simultaneously presented with tests of skill, and the winning team would receive a damage buff to help in the fight.
I’ll admit, I was so focused on the battle I was only very vaguely aware of how the other team was faring, which is represented by a bar at the top of the screen.
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When we eventually won, it did feel more like we’d prevailed against the map rather than against other human players. But even when we lost, I came away from each match feeling pretty eager to requeue and try to learn more and do better. Since you lose by gradually falling behind, and other players can’t actually take you out of the game by killing you, being defeated felt more motivating than demotivating.
Though it may not satisfy a lust for blood, Evercore Heroes feels like a fun change of pace, especially if each match can continue to offer new and dynamic challenges even as players become more familiar with the game.
If you’re interested in trying it out yourself, you can purchase a founder’s pack to gain access to the Closed Beta, which will begin on Tuesday 20 June.