SMITE ( Hi-Rez Studios )

[Draegan]

That arena video was pretty boring to watch if you ask me, kind of like watching LOL dominion.

[Falconeer]

You have a point.

Maybe Angry Joe can make it a little more lively and colorful. 

[Draegan]

Nope. That mode of gameplay is boring to watch imo.

[Falconeer]

So, Smite is officially launching today with the 200k tournament in Atlanta, GA.

- Here's the official launch trailer.

- Here's an interesting video where they tell the story of how Smite went from the concept of a game mode for Global Agenda to a succesful standalone product.

- Here's the second-to-latest god reveal, the 50th, Scylla the Horror of the Deep.

- Here's the latest episode in their "cute" webseries where the Devs play themselves making parodies of what actually happen in the studio. This deals with their relationship with the Chinese partner Tencent.

- And here's the latest "premium skin", released for Sun Wukong the monkey god, fashioned after Darth Maul. I honestly can't understand how they plan on getting away with this without being sued by Disney.

[Falconeer]

For what it's worth, they released a new game mode called Siege, revamped the League, overhauled the UI and the items, and introduced a few more gods and goddesses bringing the total to 53.

Here's the Siege tutorial.

I am sure Blizzard will take that spot with Heroes of the Storm, but according to Twitch Smite is the third most popular MOBA in the world at the moment.

[Pennilenko]

I think Smite is going to continue growing. I recently got just about everybody in both of my shooter clans interested in it. My estimate is that I introduced right around sixty people to it all by myself and I know I'm not alone. Smite is totally for somebody that really liked WOW battlegrounds/arenas but wanted more skill based skill shots and none of the questing grinding bullshit you have to do with WOW.

Basically Smite is my ideal PVP game outside of the modern shooter genre.

[Johny Cee]

Played some this week.  Already got matched up with the 4 other Spanish/Portugese speakers.  They basically threw hard all early game, I put the game on my back and carried them.  I fucked up a bit while attacking their titan and ate a bad death, and literally had all four start the "artemis idiota" or whatever nonsense.

Literally, they were all negative scores and we were pushed to phoenixes, and had a failed surrender vote.  I was 18/x/1x and had multiple triple/quadra kills, along with multiple gold fury kills AND single-handedly taking a bunch of towers...  I goof once and they're shit talking.

Oh MOBAs!  Please never change!

[Mrbloodworth]

I think Smite is going to continue growing. I recently got just about everybody in both of my shooter clans interested in it. My estimate is that I introduced right around sixty people to it all by myself and I know I'm not alone. Smite is totally for somebody that really liked WOW battlegrounds/arenas but wanted more skill based skill shots and none of the questing grinding bullshit you have to do with WOW.

Basically Smite is my ideal PVP game outside of the modern shooter genre.

And none of the out of match power bullshit from Lol. Also, you have to aim.

[Falconeer]

I think Smite is going to continue growing. I recently got just about everybody in both of my shooter clans interested in it. My estimate is that I introduced right around sixty people to it all by myself and I know I'm not alone. Smite is totally for somebody that really liked WOW battlegrounds/arenas but wanted more skill based skill shots and none of the questing grinding bullshit you have to do with WOW.

Basically Smite is my ideal PVP game outside of the modern shooter genre.

And none of the out of match power bullshit from Lol. Also, you have to aim.

Which, sadly enough, seems to be one of the things that keep most people away. This game does a good job at telling certain kind of players that they suck right off the bat. FPS players stick to FPSs, and MOBA/MMO players have a hard time aiming so they leave pretty soon. Smite is doing great and growing like crazy, but I'm afraid it will soon hit a "skill" cap that will just prevent it from becoming huge.

In the meantime, they released a few more gods and the latest is Janus which is bsically the "Portal (Valve's Portal...)" god. His skills are really fucking cool and the engine does a fantastic job with all the teleporting and dropping.

[Spiff]

They're also finally re-balancing warriors (aka: bruisers; aka: jack of all trades, master of all trades) this patch so they don't completely invalidate the existence of other supports anymore.
New gods come out at a steady pace, new game mode is a fairly fun little alternative and they seem to be on top of balancing overall; I do hope they start working on a bit more item/build diversity in future, but so far their development has been impressive.

I get what you're saying about that skill cap though;  you can be great at MOBAs but still get wrecked because the other guy just has ridiculous skills/aim, but at the same time you can't just one-man-destroy a whole team like some l33tz0r can in an FPS.
Which actually makes it a much fairer game overall imo, fair just isn't what a lot of people want.

[Falconeer]

Ultimate God Weekend

For the weekend you can play with all the 53 gods and goddesses unlocked.

Gods and Goddesses!
The battleground grows heated this weekend as all gods will be free to play! Gather up your friends and enter into your favorite game mode to ascend to godhood. Ultimate God Weekend will run starting Friday (May 30th) and ending Monday (June 2nd) at 8:00 AM EDT and during this time all players will be able to play any god they desire.
Even our newest god Janus will be within your grasp, but please remember to bring your game.

[Ginaz]

I have a code for a free Zeus if anyone wants it.  Send me a PM if interested.  Oh, and no one post wonders.   Thanks.

[Falconeer]

Smite has reached an impressive 2,000,000$ prize pool for the upcoming World Championship in January. Hi-Rez put in 1M, the other million (and counting) has been funded with 5% out of every store purchase over the past few months. It also reached the 62 gods/heroes mark. Can't stress enough how much the game has improved since last year and how great it is that it can be played both in the traditional MOBA gamemode, or the much preferred by me pure PvP arena mode. Be warned though, skill ceiling is damn high so prepare yourself to be destroyed over and over (and the problem is most like your our old age).  

[Falconeer]

World Cup live now.

http://www.twitch.tv/smitegame

2.6M prize, second highest ever (Well, technically DOTA 2 holds 1st and 2nd highest). For some reason, higher than LoL prizes.

[Rasix]

Isn't the prize pool crowd funded?  That would be possibly why it's higher than LoL, although (IMO) Riot did low-ball their last World Championships.

[Draegan]

Doesn't LOL pay LCS players salaries or someshit?

[Rasix]

Doesn't LOL pay LCS players salaries or someshit?

Yes. EU and NA LCS players get regular salaries.  Plus there's prize pools for the various season splits.

Chinese teams are playing half mil plus salaries to Koreans they're importing.

As for Smite, this so far is interesting so far. The casters are fucking terrible, however.  A little difficult to follow, as I don't know a damn thing about the meta involved or the what the various Gods do.

[Spiff]

It's a fairly insulated group of people that have mostly been playing/streaming/casting for a long time.
I get the sense a bunch of 'em are around 'cause they got on at the ground floor and HR wants to be loyal, but for an event of this size they really should have looked for some better (additional) talent.

They're also still having trouble using their biggest selling point, "it's all 3d person!", in the camerawork for their casting.
That said it's one of the few games I actually enjoy watching other people play, so I'm somewhat excited for the high level matches.

[Draegan]

The game's graphics and animations are still terrible. I can't still get over that even though they have improved.

[Falconeer]

Change glasses Draegan, you are wrong. Or crank up the resolution, you know.

[Draegan]

Change glasses Draegan, you are wrong. Or crank up the resolution, you know.

I'm just watching the streams. Shit still looks bad.

[Falconeer]

Fair enough, but even at the highest resolution the stream doesn't do it any justice. Of course this isn't Assassin's Creed, but the majority of the gods and goddesses have been remade and the new skins and models are very very good. Animations have to be quick and snappy because of the timing required for super fast execution, but outside of hovering gods which often feels off everything else is pretty amazing now. You can see cloth and hair swaying and the quality of the models is really high with in many cases an over the top amount of details.

Take a look at Chaac including his Slaughterhouse skin, or Odin, or Sylvanus bark and mushroom details, or Nu Wa's feet, or Nox's swaying dress and hair. The only thing this game is missing is a good model viewer, but go to the god screen (the tab with the thunderbolt from your home screen) and check them out from there.

These games, LoL, DOTA, even Heroes of the Storm, are meant to work on very low end machines, but Smite is surprisingly good looking now for what it is supposed to do. I doubt any of the previously mentioned looks any beter than Smite (in fact they don't). Maybe it's a matter of preferred style? Screenshots are not going to show off the animations, but I invite you to launch the client and not even log in. The log in screen presents you with Awilix. If you still think graphics and animations are terrible, then fine you win.




They also recently introduced a new skin for Thanatos that changes shape 4 times as Thanatos levels up during a single match.



Even Arachne, one of the most underwhelming goddesses in an underwhelming picture, looks better than the Blizard's equivalent Zagara.

[Nightblade]

Stuff

I am now going to try this game for the third time, as my LoL pings have inexplicably risen by 20 since the Christmas event. I'm curious if character movement still feels like I'm sliding around a really bad college student's final project.

[Falconeer]

I'm curious if character movement still feels like I'm sliding around a really bad college student's final project.

I wish I knew what the hell you are talking about. Anyway, just to be sure, don't try gods or goddeses that hover (Zeus, Aphrodite, Nu Wa, Kukulkan) and only pick those who have to use their legs to move around.

Also, semifinal between two NA teams going on live right now.

http://twitch.tv/smitegame

[Draegan]

Stuff

I am now going to try this game for the third time, as my LoL pings have inexplicably risen by 20 since the Christmas event. I'm curious if character movement still feels like I'm sliding around a really bad college student's final project.

I tried 3 months ago or so and yeah it still did then.

[Falconeer]

Final Game, for 1.3 Million dollars starting live right now. Best of 5. Incidentally, EU vs NA (some people seem to care).

[Nightblade]

So I gave the game a shot again, and this janky mess of a game might be growing on me. I've been playing Loki in arena since I havent unlocked the standard mode yet. Not being able to strafe quickly is weird, the sound effects lack any kind of impact but it feels a bit more fun this time around. Maybe it's because I'm playing Loki. Maybe it has something to do with winning a 4 v 5, or maybe something in the game is better than it was since the last time I tried it.

[Trippy]

Okay I've started playing and picked up the Gods pack so I now need some recommendations on who to learn with. Assuming I eventually want to play Conquest mode, who would be some good gods to learn with in each of the roles and which roles would be easiest to learn first assuming my main MOBA experience was playing the original DOTA for a while and then leaving before they changed all the heroes after which I was never able to get back into the game (they took out my favorite which rezzed minions, among other skills)?

Normally I would gravitate to something like Support but it seems like you are expected to initiate team fights in this game with Support so that would be bad if I had to do that for my team so I probably don't want to focus on that first. From what I've read so far about SMITE and what I know about MOBAs in general my guess as the easiest to learn/least detriment to team to have a n00b playing would be:

1. Solo (short side)
2. Mid
3. Support (long side)
4. Jungler
5. Carry (long side)

Does that sound about right? And who are two or three gods that would be good to learn on in each of those first three roles?

[Falconeer]

I hate to admit that after more than two years of raving about this game, I can't really help you cause I know NOTHING about Conquest Mode (which would be the traditional 3-lanes MOBA mode). I have about 2000 played matches, and 99.9% of them are in Arena mode.

Anyway, I can help you with gods and their characteristics though.

There are 5 classes: Guardians, Warriors, Assassins, Hunters and Mages. Each god or goddess plays very differently, and their role can be changed dramatically through items, but the class they belong to usually dictate a few common traits:

- Guardians have a lot of defense and strong Crowd Control, but low damage (exception being Bacchus and Ares). They are usually melee fighters (Hades being the exception). They deal magical damage.
- Warriors have a lot of mobility, survivability, decent attack. They are usually melee fighters. They deal physical damage.
- Assassins have mobility, devastating burst damage, usually very low HP but can escape in a few different ways. They are a noob-trap. Avoid at first. They deal physical damage.
- Hunters are ranged figthers able to deal ridiculously high-damage later in the game. They are very fragile too but being able to keep a distance helps them and they also have an escape ability of some sort. They deal physical damage.
- Mages are exactly what you think they are: casters of many different sorts, they are the most common class mostly because they can really be very different from each other. Some of them are tougher, some of them are less, some have longer range skills, some need to get closer, some heal, some support, some nuke, some DOT, and so on. They deal magical damage.

I would suggest to start with either a mage or a hunter because melee is really brutal the first few times you play. No matter what, you end up dead and you have no idea how it happened. That's especially true for assassins: it's easy to kill with them, but it's even easier to die. The skill ceiling in this game is high, mostly because it revolves around executing perfectly while at the same time having positional awareness, which is harder to master than one would think.

I would say that the easiest characters in the game are Neith, an archer that can easily get away from everything with a backflip, and Chang'e, a mage that has short range but also a bit of self healing and a getaway dance that makes her invulnerable for a second. Ra is also a good choice, he can heal and keep a distance, and his ultimate is lethal and blissful.

Don't take tanks (guardians) in your first games cause everyone will hate you for not doing what they expect a tank to do. And don't take warriors or assassins cause you will die every time you get close to someone wandering what the hell is wrong with this stupid game! (tip: hit Y to see what killed you).

I also think that before dabbling with Conquest, which is supposedly the "serious game", everyone should practice a lot of Arena, in order to have an advanced course on how to kill and not be killed by players, and see how group mechanics work.

This primer is still good. To recap & reword:

- Guardians have a lot of hard Crowd Control and they are often expected to initiate due to their CC Ultimate. As far as I know they are considered support, because they are the best at peeling and keeping hunters and mages safe. Their CC Ultimate is usually used to initiate. Bacchus is the easiest to use because he has a big jump that he can use to escape (or to initiate). Geb, Athena and Sylvanus are considered the best in Conquest.

- Hunters are the ADC. They all have an escape ability which helps them keep their distance, and usually some form of hard CC. Neith is the easiest to use. Apollo, Anhur and Rama are considered the best in Conquest.

- Assassins I believe are usually classified as junglers. They need items, they need money. They all have escape abilities, but if they don'y pick the right time to assassinate a dying enemy they just get vaporized since they are fragile and melee. Most used in Conquest are Nemesis, Kali, Serqet. Or Ao Kuang, even though he's a Mage. Bastet is the easiest to use in my opinion.

- Warriors are hard to master cause they don't live as much as you'd expect and they don't hit that hard. Also, they usually rely on "soft" CC (with exceptions) so their job as peelers is harder. Most used in Conquest is certainly Hercules, then Tyr (very hard to play), Osiris and Vamana.

- Mages are so many and so different from each other that it's hard to bunch them together. Some are glass cannons, some are healers, some are assassins, some are weird combinations of different things. I personally can't play most of them for their lack of escape, so if anyone targets me I panick and I am dead. Still, they are extremely powerful. Chang'e is the easiest to use by far although not the most powerful. Common picks in Conquest seem to be Ra, Nox, Poseidon, Vulcan.

Hope that helps a bit. Sorry if I can't help with the proper Conquest terminology. That's just not the game I play as matches are a bit too long for my tastes, and there's too much PvE. But I like to watch it :)

The obvious rule of the thumb though is that the easiest gods to play are those with escape abilities, ranged attack, and/or big AOE skills that you don't have to aim too much.

[Spiff]

I used to play quite a bit of ranked conquest (was low platinum league at on point, so proud  ), although I haven't the past few months really. Meta hasn't changed that much since I think, so my list from 'easiest/mostly just farm and don't get killed early' to 'hardest/people will expect the most of you' is:

1. Solo - to start off with you want a god that has good clear so if you get bullied you can just sit under tower and farm up for the 10-15 minute mark, when your team will need you to start rotating and pwning the teamfights. At the start of the game the jungler will most likely join you to help with the clear and mooch some xp.
- Ra is always a solid choice; excellent clear, decent burst and a heal. Definitely start off with a mage though, bruisers are much more common for the solo in higher ranked play, but it's hard to clear without getting poked to death if you're not familiar with them. If you're itching to go bruiser though:
- Chaac, he's fairly easy (and fairly boring), with a self heal and the safest clear of any bruiser.

2. ADC - junglers tend to not gank the duo lane that often in the current meta, making adc sort of a semi-solo lane. Again good clear is what you want.
- Apollo is always a good pick (because of his 2 escapes, making him very hard to gank).
- Rama is decent, very low mana usage.
- Anhur is old but gold, in lowbie matches especially he tends to dominate.

3. Mid - harder than solo or adc imo because there's more grouping/ganking early game in mid and you're expected to help and contest the all-important mid camps next to your lane.
- Again Ra is an easy pick.
- Agni can do well, but the first 4 levels before he has his ulti can be a bit hard for clearing.
- I'd recommend trying Isis and Janus as well, 2 very powerful gods if you master them with some very unique options.

4. Support - supports are expected to do a lot in the current meta. I mean if your team is great you might get away with just sitting in the duo lane the first 10 mins, but realistically you'll be rotating mid to contest the mid-camps whenever they spawn, placing most of the wards (at least early game), possibly helping the jungler steal jungle camps, contesting/securing the gold fury (major jungle camp worth a lot of gold) and basically be expected to bail out anyone that gets ganked anywhere any time.
- Geb is always good; great ultimate to initiate or interrupt teamfights and he has a shield that cleanses all CC, and gives (temporary) extra health to whomever he puts it on.
- Sylvanus; loads of CC and an AoE heal/damage that does a lot early game.

5. Jungler - the hardest role to play imo, they rule the early/mid game and it's the role most likely to carry the team if he's good. That said you have to be everywhere; ganking solo/mid (and possibly duo if there's a grouping), contesting mid camps, clearing jungle buffs for your team (you're pretty much expected to do this whenever they spawn), stealing enemy camps and all the while keeping up in farm with the enemy team (which can be hard, it's quite common for the jungler to have an early death and just never be able to farm up again).
You're looking at assassins for this, having an escape is one of the main differences between good and sub-par jungle gods; you have to be aggressive to get the lead you're expected to get and you will put yourself in awkward positions to do so.
- Serquet rules the jungle meta atm; she has hard CC, 2 escapes/initiations and ridiculous burst. It's rare to see her get through the banning phase in ranked.
- Kali, the former queen of the jungle; one of the enemy gods is her target, she kills that god -> she's full health. Also gets hard CC and an escape of course.
- Nemesis; no hard CC, but very mobile and an ultimate that allows her to carve through tanky bruisers and even supports.
- Ao Kuang; redesigned to be the first real magical assassin. No hard CC though, but insane burst, his ultimate can execute anyone below a certain % health and of course he has an escape (which stealths him for good measure).
- Thanatos is still surprisingly popular; his thing is getting very fed, very early and forcing a surrender basically. He has insane damage early game, self healing and virtually no mana issues. If he isn't ahead and bullying everyone by 10 minutes though, he's irrelevant. Damage falls off a cliff, no escape or hard CC outside of the ult.

Quite a bit of text already, but all of that is mostly about early/mid game. Late game it's all about the teamfights and big objectives (Fire Giant, which gives major teamwide buffs and phoenixes, which are the last line of defense for the base), which indeed the supports are expected to manage; This is also where bruisers shine most, harassing/controlling anyone squishier than them (which is everyone except the support). That said, I'd say hardly half of my ranked games make it to that stage before a surrender and in casual early surrenders are even more common.

[Trippy]

Thanks guys. I've been playing practice and co-op arena to learn the gods. There's a lot the learn in this game.

One quick question about co-op arena. Most of my games one person drops right after the start. Is there a reason people do that intentionally? It doesn't seem like they would do it cause they don't like the god picks since it's so easy to beat the AI team.

[Falconeer]

I... honestly have no idea. I have never played co-op arena which I assume it's an arena match vs. the AI. My best guess is that those people are joining the co-op arena because they are bored and waiting for friends, or just testing a build or a skin, or simply waiting for their deserter ban to expire so they can go back to normal matchmaker. The AI is really used as training dummies, so that's probably what those people are doing: popping in, trying a few things, leaving as soon as they are done. But this is all assuming you don't get a deserter ban by dropping out of co-op arena. If you do get a deserter ban, and lose your Goodwill in the process, then I have no idea.

[Trippy]

The PTS meta is

[Falconeer]

PTS? Public Test Server? What are you doing there!

[Trippy]

God no I'm not playing on PTS but a lot of the popular streamers are playing there.