Smite game - Page 18

On July 24 2012 18:58 Enema wrote:
http://puu.sh/LfLX
My Bakasura build :D

On July 25 2012 23:58 iGrok wrote:
Tried this last night. Went 2-1, carried a game hard (9/1/5) as Ymir.

Honestly, I don't see the appeal. The game's graphics would be great if this were 2005, the UI is horrid, and the gameplay just feels like I'm playing WoW battlegrounds. Oncethe novelty of playing a First-person MOBA wore off, what I was left with was... underwhelming to say the least.

Gods: Gods are the only thing that really matters in this game. Towers do basically no damage to you, and prioritize minions even when you are attacking enemy champions underneath you. Minons can be a little annoying, but prioritize friendly minions to the point that they will stop attacking you if a friendly minion comes within range. Levels are the most important thing, last hitting basically does not exist, you just get gold for having attacked a minion that died.

Art: The models and textures are not very good. They do have excellent particles though - thats the one area in which Hi-rez studios lives up to its name. Otherwise... I mean, the minimap could have come from a game in the 90s. the ground textures are low resolution, and the cobblestone stays facing North to south even when the road is at a 45 degree angle. Your base itself may as well have been colored with MS Paint - its 3 colors, not even blended. The art direction for the gods is just silly (wukong looks and sounds like the court jester, not the king). And the art for the items looks like, well...


Speaking of items, there are no recipes. You choose what item you want and you level it up. This was such a huge part of MOBAs, I don't understand why it isn't in Smite. The game feels extremely linear since once you've bought Tier 1 of Reinforced Boots, you aren't going to build that into Boots of the Magi or Warrior Tabi, you're stuck with whatever you bought first.

I'll give them credit for a new approach to the genre, and some really nice particle effects (except that stupid Wukong confetti - again, 2005 graphics there), but this game holds no appeal for me and I uninstalled after three games.

On July 25 2012 23:58 iGrok wrote:
Tried this last night. Went 2-1, carried a game hard (9/1/5) as Ymir.

Honestly, I don't see the appeal. The game's graphics would be great if this were 2005, the UI is horrid, and the gameplay just feels like I'm playing WoW battlegrounds. Oncethe novelty of playing a First-person MOBA wore off, what I was left with was... underwhelming to say the least.

Gods: Gods are the only thing that really matters in this game. Towers do basically no damage to you, and prioritize minions even when you are attacking enemy champions underneath you. Minons can be a little annoying, but prioritize friendly minions to the point that they will stop attacking you if a friendly minion comes within range. Levels are the most important thing, last hitting basically does not exist, you just get gold for having attacked a minion that died.

Art: The models and textures are not very good. They do have excellent particles though - thats the one area in which Hi-rez studios lives up to its name. Otherwise... I mean, the minimap could have come from a game in the 90s. the ground textures are low resolution, and the cobblestone stays facing North to south even when the road is at a 45 degree angle. Your base itself may as well have been colored with MS Paint - its 3 colors, not even blended. The art direction for the gods is just silly (wukong looks and sounds like the court jester, not the king). And the art for the items looks like, well...


Speaking of items, there are no recipes. You choose what item you want and you level it up. This was such a huge part of MOBAs, I don't understand why it isn't in Smite. The game feels extremely linear since once you've bought Tier 1 of Reinforced Boots, you aren't going to build that into Boots of the Magi or Warrior Tabi, you're stuck with whatever you bought first.

I'll give them credit for a new approach to the genre, and some really nice particle effects (except that stupid Wukong confetti - again, 2005 graphics there), but this game holds no appeal for me and I uninstalled after three games.

On July 26 2012 00:25 iGrok wrote:
First person, third person, whatever, the concept is the same.

Yeah, at level 1 towers did 10% of my HP. By level 3 I could dive all day and give 0 fucks.

Why would I want recipes? 2 reasons:
1) I can adjust my build on the go depending on who on the enemy team is doing well. To take an example from LoL, if I buy T1 boots, I can turn those into Merc Treads if the enemy caster is doing well, or Tabi if the AD is doing well. I can buy a ruby crystal for health early, and build that into midgame or lategame items depending on how my team is doing and whether we want to push for a midgame win (say we get an Ace around 15 minutes) or turn it into a Rod of Ages for the ultra lategame power. Recipes add flexibility to the game.

2) Recipes add complexity to the game. More complex games (for me at least) are more fun. With Smite's item system, it feels like I should just designate what items I want pre-game and have it auto-buy for me.

One more thing, from someone who has beta tested a few games and actually worked for a game studio:
"Closed Beta" does not mean that they run the graphics on lower quality. Everything that is put into the game (that does not have a very obvious placeholder graphic) is assumed to be ready to ship quality wise. Artists don't create the low quality versions first, then medium, then high. They create the ultra settings first, and then programs automatically create the lower-settings graphics. Now, perhaps the studio will come back and change certain graphics, but at the time of implementation, all graphics are deemed finished.

On July 26 2012 02:05 Tobberoth wrote:

Try playing a non tank (Ymir is about as tanky as it gets) and try diving a tower at lvl 3, you will be obliterated.

As for your comments on recipies and graphics, I agree. Recipies are cool and add complexity. However, Smite is not intended to be a complex game, it's really casual, and that's what makes it fun for me. If I want complexity and competitiveness, I play dota 2, which I play a lot. Sometimes though, you just want to mess around with friends, and the simplicity of Smite makes it really sweet. It's still skillbased, so as long as you're not looking for complexity and extreme depth, there's no problem with it being casual.

The graphics are OK. Their artists are obviously not the best ones in the market, but I think they specifically aimed for low system requirements, which they hit spot on, the game flows better on a macbook than LoL, which is pretty ridiculous considering. I would love better graphics, but it doesn't matter to me in a game like this as long as I can make out what I'm fighting and which abilities are used.

I think your criticisms of the game are fair, I just don't see why that makes it so bad that you can't play it. The game has a market and it's probably the best game in that market atm (casual action moba).

On July 26 2012 02:13 iGrok wrote:

I get the appeal to casual players, but the game feels more like a condensed RPG than a MOBA. Maybe its just that all MOBAs have been top down until now, but idk. Most of my friends agreed with me (one quit 16 minutes into his first game) - it just isn't very interesting or fun when you've played other MOBAs. On top of that, people who are drawn to the genre by this game are unlikely to enjoy other MOBAs. So while I guess it might interest the very casual player, I laugh when people suggest "This could be the next eSport!" or take this game seriously in any way.

I'm not bashing anyone who enjoys playing it, to each their own, but there is no way this becomes a competitive game.

+ Show Spoiler +

On July 26 2012 03:02 iGrok wrote:
What do you mean by slower?

On July 26 2012 02:13 iGrok wrote:

I get the appeal to casual players, but the game feels more like a condensed RPG than a MOBA. Maybe its just that all MOBAs have been top down until now, but idk. Most of my friends agreed with me (one quit 16 minutes into his first game) - it just isn't very interesting or fun when you've played other MOBAs. On top of that, people who are drawn to the genre by this game are unlikely to enjoy other MOBAs. So while I guess it might interest the very casual player, I laugh when people suggest "This could be the next eSport!" or take this game seriously in any way.

On July 26 2012 06:38 Talin wrote:


That's a rather weird analysis. Your conclusions are mostly correct, but the reasoning behind them seems way off / biased.

If we're talking about casual appeal, casual players make up a vast majority MOBA playerbase and spectator base (if we're talking about competitive play). It would be fantastic for Smite to be able to draw in the very casual player, but the very casual player is much more likely to venture into League of Legends considering that he's likely heard of it, or has friends who play it, and so on. Whereas he's not likely at all to have ever heard of Smite.

At this point, from what I've seen on the community boards, Smite draws in mostly veteran players who want a different spin on the genre, or to a lesser extent the type of new players who never got into other MOBAs after trying it (myself being in the latter group). There is clearly some appeal in MOBA-like gameplay that isn't so point-and-clicky that has spawned games like Smite, SMNC and Awesomenauts which are more action/skill based than the original games that play much like an RTS with a single character (which is technically where Dota and the whole genre came from in the first place).

As for the fabled "esport" term, modern day esport is where the money is, money is usually where the popularity is, and popularity in turn involves a mostly casual playerbase to make up the numbers. There isn't an esports committee that elects games based on merit, otherwise we'd still have Brood War and Quake reigning supreme. There's only people and money. Invest enough money and you can make Minecraft a successful esport - it has a massive community, tons of exposure via Youtube, and a twitchy enough gameplay to make it exciting to watch when presented properly (and I'm almost certain something like this will happen in the next year or two). On the other hand, a game like Smite, being 4th or 5th MOBA game at best in the popularity pecking order (and unlikely to progress much higher even when released), has next to no hope to squeeze into the media spotlight.

Regarding your comments on game mechanics, the tower comment simply isn't accurate. Towers do reasonable amount of damage, as do the minions - certainly enough for you to not be able to ignore them without being punished if the enemy players are playing correctly.

Complexity generally isn't a positive thing in games. It is usually an artifical substitute for lack of genuine gameplay depth. The more pure the gameplay is, the less additional layers of complexity you require for the game to be challenging and entertaining. When designing a competitive game, you always want features that have to be mastered, not learned.