Evercore Heroes Preview – Competitive multiplayer doesn’t have to mean head-to-head

thesixthaxis.com:

There’s always something so satisfying about winning dramatic head-to-head duels in video games. Whether it’s a clutch capture the flag score, surviving in a battle royale, a grand 64-player team efforts or the push and pull through a MOBA’s lanes, one player or team emerges victorious in direct competition with other players. But what if competition didn’t mean looking your rivals in their video game character eyes? That’s what Evercore Heroes asks and answers.

It’s easy to look at screenshots and trailers for Evercore Heroes and jump to quick conclusions about the genre and gameplay style it features – heck, I’m a little guilty of that myself! While it might appear to be a MOBA, the ‘competitive PvE’ tag certainly implying something rather combative, you don’t actually go head-to-head against the other players and teams in direct combat. Instead it’s like an action RPG score attack with teams getting knocked out as you build up to a climactic boss battle.

Each match sees four teams of four players venture into the fantasy world of Lumerea to battle monsters, defend the Evercore from nasties, and eventually face off against a climactic boss battle. The goal is to do this as best you possibly can, racking up the points you need to outpace the other teams and avoid being knocked out of the match. You don’t fight alongside or against the rival teams, but you can see their wisp-like forms floating around the map, clueing you in on how they’re doing in their own fight for victory, the strategy their employing and objectives that they’re going for.

It’s all about team composition, and it’s here that Evercore Heroes hews closer to a MOBA than a regular action RPG with hero characters instead of base classes – it does make sense