AAAH! Yes I know this type of game. But its not really what I had in mind. Actually it is completly different. But it looks very similar in a still sketch.
I should have elaborated more on the terms MOBA and fighting game.
MOBA (League of Legends, DOTA, Awesomenauts) meets Fighting Game (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Smash Brothers)
Game set up:
It's a local 1vs1 game. Before start of a match both players choose from a range of characters. Each character has different abilities and units at it's disposal also a unique base. The set of Units could be Melee,Ranged, Healer and a special unit (like a flyer or tunneler).
After the players chose their Hero the second can elect the stage. Stages are presented as a grid which includes a random option.
A match is has a set of 3 rounds and the player with the most wins gets the match win.
How do you win a round? You destroy the enemies base or after the timer (3-5 mins per round) is up the player whos base took less damage wins.
As you can see on the sketch The player bases are placed at the end of a map. Units spawn from it and walk lanes down to the opposite side. They attack only other minions or the enemy base. Minion can not be attack directly by heros but suffer from area damage (like throwing heroes around) The player can not Influence which units spawn (ok, maybe there are some special moves that spawn units?) Minions spawn at a set interval or certain events.
The player controls the hero directly like you would expect from a fighting game. You can walk, dash/sprint, jump and use a different attacks. Complexity is much lower than in normal fighting games to avoid overwhelming the player. As he needs to keep attention to the surrounding units.
Hero combat should avoid too much air dashing and concentrate und pins, lockdowns and area control. There should be a possibility for every hero to push, pull or guard minions.
A Hero can absorb a certian amount of damage and then is killed and will be respawned at the base after a few seconds. The respawn will ignite a blowback to enemy heroes (but not to minions).
Heros as well as Minions deal damage to bases, but minion do a lot more. They have to reach the opponents base entrance to deal it.
Problems with the Ddesign
While I think this game could be very interessting I already see some problems.
- The balancing of damage dealt by heroes to minions.
- Hard for beginners to make use of lockdowns and area control (if it is too easy lockdown could become too powerfull)
- It is important to avoid stalemates
- Information processing in the UI - HP for every hero, unit timer, match timer, base hp, special meter (if needed), minion hp thats all a lot of information that needs to be shown clearly.