@blakeyrat said:
Can someone who actually plays MOBA games explain to me why they still use RTS control schemes? I understand that it started life as a RTS mod, but when I was playing DOTA2 the one thing that drive me batty was, why the holy shit do I have to do the "click to move" bullshit instead of being able to control my character directly? It's not like I'm controlling 27 guys at once. I don't get that.
Well, for starters, you actually can control multiple guys at once, depending on which hero you're playing. The entire schtick behind Chen in Dota 2 is that he can take control of jungle creeps, for example.
More to the point, though, it has gameplay implications beyond just how you control the game. You can pan around the map at any time and see what's going on on the other side of the map (provided your team has vision), which would be difficult to implement with a different control scheme. You can't move and attack at the same time, which affects the dynamics of how enemies can interact (most importantly in how attackers can chase their targets). Additionally, your character can only move, attack, and cast spells in the direction they're facing, and there's a slight turnaround time, which means you often have to commit to certain courses of action because the turnaround time would put you at a disadvantage.