Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Analysis of Movement Features in Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas

  • Published:
Journal of Grid Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

On-line games represent one of the primary instances of virtual environments, in which avatars share a synchronous and persistent virtual world with each other. A careful analysis and a deep understanding of mobility in online games is of paramount importance to properly design mobility models to accurately reproduce avatar movements. In fact, mobility models of avatar have a relevant impact on the architectural design of virtual environments, especially for those based on distributed and decentralized solutions. This paper analyses around 640 hours of mobility of an extremely popular online game genre, the Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBA). The analysis has revealed interesting characteristics with respect ot the area of interest of the players and their utilization of the game area. Many of the results confirm the speculations of MOBA players, in terms of the phases of the game and the general behaviours of the avatars. Ultimately, our analysis is aimed toward the creation of realistic mobility models for MOBA environments, as well as the development of AI agents for MOBA games.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Blizzard entertainment, world of warcraft website. https://worldofwarcraft.com. Accessed: 09 Apr 2017

  2. Dota 2 - defense of the ancient. http://blog.dota2.com/. Accessed: 2017-05-26

  3. Heroes of newerth. http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/. Accessed: 2017-05-26

  4. The international 2017 - dota 2 prize pool tracker. http://dota2.prizetrac.kr/international2017. Accessed: 2018-02-12

  5. League of legends. http://leagueoflegends.com/. Accessed: 2018-02-12

  6. Quake 2. http://store.steampowered.com/app/2320/QUAKE_II/. Accessed: 2017-05-26

  7. Second life official website. http://secondlife.com/. Accessed: 09 Apr 2017

  8. Birje, M.N., Manvi, S.S.: Wigrimma: A wireless grid monitoring model using agents. J. Grid Comput. 9(4), 549–572 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Carlini, E., Coppola, M., Ricci, L.: Evaluating compass routing based aoi-cast by mogs mobility models. In: Proceedings of the 4th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques. ICST (Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering), pp. 328–335 (2011)

  10. Carlini, E., Lulli, A.: Data used for submission entitled ”A spatial analysis of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena mobility traces”. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.583600 (2017)

  11. Carlini, E., Lulli, A.: A spatial analysis of multiplayer online battle arena mobility traces. In European Conference on Parallel Processing, pp. 496–506. Springer (2017)

  12. Carlini, E., Lulli, A., Ricci, L.: Trace: generating traces from mobility models for distributed virtual environments. In European Conference on Parallel Processing, pp. 272–283. Springer (2016)

  13. Carlini, E., Lulli, A., Ricci, L.: Model driven generation of mobility traces for distributed virtual environments with trace. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, pp. e4235 (2017)

  14. Carlini, E., Ricci, L., Coppola, M.: Reducing server load in mmog via p2p gossip. In: Proceedings of the 11th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games, pp. 11. IEEE Press (2012)

  15. Cavadenti, O., Codocedo, V., Boulicaut, J.-F., Kaytoue, M.: What did i do wrong in my moba game? mining patterns discriminating deviant behaviours. In: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA), pp. 662–671. IEEE (2016)

  16. do Nascimento Silva, V., Chaimowicz, L.: On the development of intelligent agents for moba games. In: 2015 14th Brazilian Symposium on Computer Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGames), pp. 142–151. IEEE (2015)

  17. Drachen, A., Yancey, M., Maguire, J., Chu, D., Wang, I.Y., Mahlmann, T., Schubert, M., Klabajan, D.: Skill-based differences in spatio-temporal team behaviour in defence of the ancients 2 (dota 2). In: Games media entertainment (GEM) IEEE, pp 1–8. IEEE (2014)

  18. Guo, Y., Iosup, A.: The game trace archive. In: Proceedings of the 11th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games, pp. 4. IEEE Press (2012)

  19. Hu, S. -Y., Chen, H. -F., Chen, T. -H.: Von: a scalable peer-to-peer network for virtual environments. Netw IEEE 20(4), 22–31 (2006)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  20. Kavalionak, H., Carlini, E., Lulli, A., Gennaro, C., Amato, G., Meghini, C., Ricci, L.: A prediction-based distributed tracking protocol for video surveillance. In: IEEE 14th International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control (ICNSC), pp. 140–145. IEEE (2017)

  21. Kavalionak, H., Carlini, E., Ricci, L., Montresor, A., Coppola, M.: Integrating peer-to-peer and cloud computing for massively multiuser online games. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 8(2), 301–319 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Kavalionak, H., Gennaro, C., Amato, G., Vairo, C., Perciante , C., Meghini, C., Falchi, F.: Distributed video surveillance using smart cameras. Journal of Grid Computing (2018)

  23. Lamsfus, C., Martín, D., Alzua-Sorzabal, A., Torres-Manzanera, E.: Smart tourism destinations: An extended conception of smart cities focusing on human mobility. In: Information and communication technologies in tourism 2015, pp. 363–375. Springer (2015)

  24. Legtchenko, S., Monnet, S., Thomas, G.: Blue banana: resilience to avatar mobility in distributed mmogs. In: 2010 IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), pp. 171–180. IEEE (2010)

  25. Liang, H., De Silva, R.N., Ooi, W.T., Motani, M.: Avatar mobility in user-created networked virtual worlds: measurements, analysis, and implications. Multimed. Tools Appl. 45(1-3), 163–190 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Miller, J.L., Crowcroft, J.: Avatar movement in world of warcraft battlegrounds. In: Proceedings of the 8th annual workshop on Network and systems support for games, pp. 1. IEEE Press (2009)

  27. Miller, J.L., Crowcroft, J.: Group movement in world of warcraft battlegrounds. Int J Adv Media Commun 4(4), 387–404 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Junior, F. F. d., Melo, A. S. d. C., da Costa, I.B., Marinho, L. B.: Profiling successful team behaviors in league of legends Nascimento. In: Proceedings of the 23rd Brazillian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web, pp. 261–268 ACM (2017)

  29. Ricci, L., Carlini, E.: Distributed virtual environments: From client server to cloud and p2p architectures. In: 2012 International Conference on High Performance Computing and Simulation (HPCS), pp. 8–17. IEEE (2012)

  30. Ricci, L., Carlini, E., Genovali, L., Coppola, M.: Aoi-cast by compass routing in delaunay based dve overlays. In: International Conference on High Performance Computing and Simulation (HPCS), pp. 135–142. IEEE (2011)

  31. Rioult, F., Métivier, J. -P., Helleu, B., Scelles, N., Durand, C.: Mining tracks of competitive video games. AASRI Procedia 8, 82–87 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Sapienza, A., Bessi, A., Ferrara, E.: Non-negative tensor factorization for human behavioral pattern mining in online games. arXiv:1702.05695 (2017)

  33. Selimi, M., Cerdà-Alabern, L., Freitag, F., Veiga, L., Sathiaseelan, A., Crowcroft, J.: A lightweight service placement approach for community network micro-clouds. Journal of Grid Computing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10723-018-9437-3, ISSN 1572–9184 (2018)

  34. Tan, S.A., Lau, W., Loh, A.: Networked game mobility model for first-person-shooter games. In: Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games, pp. 1–9. ACM (2005)

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Information Science and Technology (ISTI), Italian National Research Council (CNR), Pisa, Italy

    Emanuele Carlini

  2. Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering (DIBRIS), University of Genova, Genova, Italy

    Alessandro Lulli

Authors
  1. Emanuele Carlini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alessandro Lulli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emanuele Carlini.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Carlini, E., Lulli, A. Analysis of Movement Features in Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas. J Grid Computing 17, 45–57 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10723-018-9470-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10723-018-9470-2

Keywords