What conclusions did they come to after testing out the different map layouts and what realizations did they make about the concept of "lanes"?
I swear, one of the most consistent complaints about MOBAs from non-MOBA people is: "why is there is only one map?"
I'd definitely recommend watching the video starting at around 17 minutes.
Basically they were testing just about every variable they could and found that if you only had one or two lanes, but with large jungles, the players wouldn't be able to see the power accruement and it was frustrating for them to come out of nowhere and be much higher than you as you had no tabs on them.
Also if there were no creeps in lanes then it was just a shitty fighting game where you'd unload everything, run away, and then do it again with no point.
Thirdly, and this point didn't really make much sense to me in the way he presented it, but I'm pretty sure he was saying it was essentially a comeback mechanic where if they're super far ahead they can force you out of the jungle through map control, but to capture actual objectives they have to essentially force xp and gold (the creeps) into you with their push giving you a way to farm up again.
He talked about it in a different context, but I'll put it here as well where whenever you put a player in a pve it will always end up the same, so you can technically maximize your jungle or whatever because it's just dumb ai that can be manipulated, but pvp was always going to be different because it's a person, so with lanes you can essentially force players into a pvp environment making it more fun for them.
He also talked about how they tried 10 v 10, 6 v 6 and 4 v 4 but 5 v 5 was the best balance where you could feel you could still carry your team if needed.
Then he talks about the rigid meta in LoL because of maximizing gold efficiency on the map because of the way the different roles scale and how in dota it wasn't that way because not all heroes need gold to scale, and how they're trying to fix that with some role system thing.
I've never played Dawngate, but this is super fascinating and makes me want to play the game. Someone should send this video to Dustin Browder.
Yeah I feel bad for making fun of it, because they're clearly intelligent articulate people who really care and are trying different things, but then I play it... and it's not very fun to me...
