u/Grtql

TL; DR: As a multi-season League of Legends Challenger at 2,500 LP player, I performed a 100-game empirical trial in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang). Even after limiting myself to play only with D-tier legacy hero (Zilong), I managed to obtain 80% win rate and Mythical Glory tier rank (89 stars, 1,821 MMR) just with fundamentals. However, I am going to stop playing this game forever. MLBB is a fundamentally broken competitive e-sport game with casualized mechanics (auto-aim, no vision control/wards), anti-snowball mechanics, power kit creep, and predatory balance cycles aimed to drive premium skins' sales.

Author’s Preface & Methodology

Being multi-season League of Legends Challenger player with 2,500 LP peak, my point of view on MOBA genre is strongly connected with high-level macro strategy, precise mechanical execution, and competitive integrity. To evaluate how mobile MOBA game compares to the PC version, I performed 100-game empirical trial in Mobile Legends.

In order to rigorously test the game's balance and mechanical depth, I handicapped my climb by playing only one D-tier legacy hero – Zilong. After playing 100 games with this character, I reached top-tier rank (Mythical Glory) with 80% win rate and obtained 1,821 MMR on the character. However, being aware of such impressive statistics, I found out that playing this game is unjustified. In the following post, I am going to explain why MLBB is not a balanced competitive e-sport game because of design flaws.

1. The Subversion of Snowball Mechanic: Flawed Comeback Architecture

In traditional PC MOBAs, making your opponent 0/6 in KDA and putting him to the 2-level and 2,000 gold disadvantage effectively eliminates that asset making them a liability for their team. This mechanic is rewarding better laning and macro. In MLBB, the comeback mechanics are poorly polished since underleveled and underplayed units can activate their ultimate abilities that provide them absolute invulnerability or crowd-control immunity. Then, if uncoordinated teammates try to engage these characters during their temporary invincibility period, MLBB's algorithms fully regenerate the low-skilled player. Thus, low-skill players can easily kill the opponents who build up macro advantage and invalidate early game skill expression.

2. Kit Disparity and Compression of Outplay Windows

There is a considerable generational gap between the heroes roster. The legacy heroes are having old-fashioned, unidirectional kits without any map mobility and just auto-attacks. At the same time, newly released, high-tier heroes have very overloaded kits with map mobility, untargetability frame, innate sustain and true damage ability. Such design gap is aggravated by the lack of complicated itemization. Since there are no utility items (such as stasis active or spell shield) in the game, the players piloting weaker heroes have to deal with mathematical ceiling problem. Even when they perform mechanically perfect gameplay, they will be unable to surpass their opponents' raw power with strategic itemization.

3. Automated Targeting Systems and the Elimination of Skillshot Mechanics

To adapt MOBA gameplay mechanics for mobile hardware, MLBB developers introduced point-and-click mechanics that simplify the basic gameplay interaction too much. With the help of such targeting system, the high-damage assassins can use full damaging combos in 0.2 seconds after activating hard crowd-control chains. It makes the player unable to do any reposition, outplay or even use defensive spells since all the actions have to be performed instantly and mechanically.

4. Information Asymmetry: The Lack of Vision Mechanics

MLBB doesn't have any vision control mechanics like wards. Due to the compact map size and the high amount of brush ambush spots, jungle and peripheral lanes become extremely risky zones for high-burst archetypes. Players are missing the tools to scout the areas and obtain map information. Thus, weak characters have to navigate around their territory with great risks turning map movements into statistical guesses.

5. Predatory Balance Cycles and Commercialization of the Metagame

Balance mechanics in MLBB show parasitism between the monetization and the game competitive integrity. Since the game is not trying to maintain stable ecosystem, the balance lifecycle is consciously designed to maximize the revenues. In MLBB, new champions and those who received premium, expensive skins are consistently introduced or nerfed to become highly overpowered. Artificial power inflation becomes an incentive to make microtransactions, thus destabilizing the metagame. Using this predatory tactic, the developers show profound institutional greed undermining the fairness of the ladder and turning the competitive gameplay into monetization vector.

6. Macro Disconnect and Systematic Matchmaking Volatility

Matchmaking mechanics of MLBB are unable to filter the players based on their macro strategic understanding. The average competitive players' base perceives the game as the casual arcade brawler game instead of MOBA game. The absence of tactical awareness can be shown in the situations after clean team wipe. Instead of performing a direct push through the lane to destroy the unprotected enemy nexus and finish the match instantly, teammates spend time killing the neutral boss monster. This tactical mistake increases the match length unnaturally and gives the defeated opponents an opportunity to respawn and build comeback artificially.

Conclusion

For the player who is used to play on the highest tiers of PC games, MLBB can be hardly called balanced competitive esport. It is designed as the casual consumer product oriented on the short mobile gaming sessions. Game architecture fails to reward tactical superiority, map control, or the basic MOBA mechanics. Instead, the competitive integrity is undermined by volatile balance mechanics encouraging cosmetics for highly overpowered heroes combined with the dependence on teammates lacking strategic understanding.

EDIT: No-Handicap 100-Games Ultimatum

To the locals who desperately move the goalposts in the comments saying "you only played against bots/casuals" and "You don't know anything about the game": Challenge accepted.

You have convinced me to play with your game a little bit more. I am going to perform the next 100-game empirical trial – but this time without the handicap. I am dropping D-tier Zilong. I am picking up 1 or 2 of your current, absolute broken S-tier jungle hyper-carries and I am going to trivialize your "high-end competitive" Mythical Immortal brackets with pure fundamentals from the PC Challenger.

Expect a follow-up post in a week. I will present the screenshots, win rates, MMR and undeniable mathematical proof that your highest ranks are nothing but an arcade illusion inflated by cosmetics. See you on the ladder; what will you say after I reach 300 stars in your bullshit game? 😉