User blog comment:LivesByProxy/Balance? Thoughts on Accuracy, Mobility, Range, & Tanks/@comment-24087642-20151130043259

Damage reduction based on distance from target reduces the uniqueness of ranged characters.

In an FPS this is fine, since everything is ranged. In fact, even the "close-range weapons" are ranged in an FPS; which is why they have less accuracy, which effectively reduces their damage at long-range. In a MOBA that would be pretty bad, as half the characters are completely non-ranged.

If range was shifted so that all characters are ranged, a MOBA would become pretty tedious, because the map would have to become bigger to compensate, and therefore either the game would have to zoom out or you would have to see a smaller percentage of the map at a time, both of which are bad.